In theory, the archery team from Thorne Bay will be the center of attention this week at an awards ceremony honoring a team of 21 Southeast Island School District students who turned in a stellar performance at the recent national championships.
In reality, a dinosaur and a turkey might steal the spotlight.
The kids from Thorne Bay finished sixth in a field of 103 teams and Taylee Nyquest won a national championship at the National Archery in the Schools (NASP) national tournament earlier this month in Louisville, Kentucky.
The results are the best yet for the thriving archery program in the Prince of Wales Island town. When the team returned home via floatplane, a crowd of about 50 --10 percent of the town's 500 residents -- gathered on the dock to cheer its arrival, Nyquest said.
Nyquest earned a $1,000 scholarship and a huge trophy for winning the girls' 3-D target competition. She was also awarded a 3-D target -- a life-size turkey that's about knee-high when placed next to her.
The turkey and the trophy will be on display when the kids are honored, as will the team's newest acquisition -- a 3-D velociraptor that's six feet tall and eight feet long.
"We'll bring out the trophies and debut the dinosaur," said Rob O'Neal, a school administrator who accompanied the team to Louisville.
No dinosaurs roamed the Kentucky Exposition Center, where 12,000 students from across the country competed in bull's-eye and 3-D divisions.
But there were turkeys, coyotes, bighorn sheep, white-tailed deer, pronghorn antelope and black bears. They were made out of foam and stood 10 to 15 meters away from the archers, who shot arrows at targets on each one.
Nyquest scored 293 out of 300 to win the girls' national championship and finish two points shy of matching the score posted by the boys' champion.
A junior who also stars in track and cross country for Thorne Bay, Nyquest posted a score of 149 out of a possible 150 on her first three targets. After five targets, her score was 246 out of a possible 250, and the Thorne Bay coaches and chaperones were thinking national championship.
So was Nyquest, who knew the score to beat among girls was 291.
The wily coyote almost took her down. The coyote was her last animal, and Nyquest -- who had fired 21 perfect 10s and four 9s up to that point -- confessed she was feeling a little like the roadrunner going into her final five arrows.
"I knew I would have to shoot a poor group to not win," Nyquest said last week from Juneau, where she won four races -- the 3,200, 1,600, 800 and 400 -- at the Region V track championships. "I let that get in my head and I shot a 7. It was a little bit crushing."
The 7 came after three straight 10s on the coyote. That gave Nyquest a score of 283 with one arrow left. She needed a 9 or 10 to win the girls' championship.
"Our coach tells us to end with a perfect arrow in every group," Nyquest said. "I've always had that down, so I was able to come up with a 10."
The 21-member Southeast Island School District team, coached by Thorne Bay alum James Stevens, ranges from fourth graders to high school seniors. Most are from Thorne Bay, but Naukati had three students on the team, Coffman Cove had one and another came from the Craig City School District.
The tournament also drew archers from other Alaska towns, including Bethel, Kodiak and Wrangell, but none fared as well as Thorne Bay. In the 3-D competition, the team placed sixth in a field of 103. In the bull's-eye competition, the team placed 99th among 192.
Nyquest, whose results qualified her for the world championships this July in Nashville, Tennessee, placed 20th among 5,475 girls in the bull's-eye competition. She shot a personal-best 290, which included 20 perfect arrows.
The top boy on the team was Quinn Slayton. In the 3-D competition, he placed ninth among 1,623 students. In the bull's-eye, he was 170th out of 6,570.
Nyquest's national championship was one of many highlights on the team's week-long trip to Kentucky.
"It was the trip of a lifetime," O'Neal said.
The students visited the University of Louisville, where they got a tour that included a stop at the school's football stadium and a chance to pose for a group photo on the sideline. They attended a Triple A baseball game, where their presence was announced on the stadium scoreboard.
They visited a Louisville high school, where Nyquest, Slayton and a couple of other students who also run track got a chance to work out on an honest-to-God oval -- something they don't have in Thorne Bay. They went to a first-run movie -- something else they don't have in Thorne Bay.
They went ziplining. They went to a Six Flags amusement park on a foggy, rainy day that kept most people away, conditions that allowed the Alaskans repeated roller-coaster rides.
"Some of them went on 16 roller-coaster rides," O'Neal said. "They'll never understand or appreciate (that usually) you're waiting two hours to get on a ride. Nobody was there.
"Can you imagine these kids who live in this small town and they're riding these roller-coasters with their Xtratufs on?"
Archery has been a popular sport for about a decade in Thorne Bay, ever since the school bought archery equipment for its P.E. department. Any kid who finishes in the top five at the state tournament gets a plane ticket to the national championships from the school district and all other expenses are covered by fundraising.
Nyquest has made five trips to the national championship and said the value of such trips is tremendous.
"It's really cool for kids to get out and see the world a little bit," she said. "We had a senior a couple of years ago who had never seen a cow before."
They don't have cows in Thorne Bay either. But thanks to the archery program, there's a dinosaur and at least one turkey.
Contact sports editor Beth Bragg at 257-4335 or bbragg@alaskadispatch.com