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When sports were shut down in the spring of 2020 due to COVID-19, Fisher Newhall couldn’t play lacrosse, a team sport that he had enjoyed throughout his youth.
With encouragement from his parents, Tom and Amy, it wasn’t long before he decided to pick up a bow to see how he could do in archery. Fisher, who is now 13 and a rising eighth grader at Lylburn Downing Middle School, had done some bowhunting with his father the previous fall.
With team sports on hiatus in 2020, Fisher and Tom realized archery was a good sport that had plenty of social distancing and where the risk of injury was low. Tom, an experienced bowhunter, worked with Fisher on archery. Using online resources, Fisher showed notable improvement in just three weeks. “A lot of it, we’re self-taught,” said Tom, who owns Newhall Custom Builders LLC in Rockbridge Baths, while Amy is the lead teacher at EarthSong Community School in Lexington.
Tom and Fisher eventually connected with Monte Jessee, director of operations at the former High Country Outfitters store in Lexington, who gave him some pointers. Through competitions, they met Nate Atkins, president of Augusta Archers, and they practice with him.
In 2021, Fisher won the 2021 Archery Shooters Association (ASA) state championship in the Eagle class. He won in the youth open male class in 2022 and also won the indoor state championship that year.
At the national level, Fisher placed second in the spring last year and third in the winter. Now he’s moved up to the next-highest age class.
Tom noted that two organizations, the ASA and the International Bowhunting Organization (IBO), are involved with threedimensional archery, and Fisher has taken on competitions with both.
In the 3D tournaments, participants can enter a “Known” or “Unknown” division, which refers to distance, and Fisher is competing in the Unknown division. In the Known division, the distance for each target is marked. In the Unknown division, rangefinders are not allowed and archers have to judge the distance for themselves. This adds an extra degree of difficulty to the event. Targets often range from 10 to 80 yards.
In the IBO last year, Fisher took first in two of the three legs of the Triple Crown and managed to put together an amazing three days of shooting at Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Pennsylvania last year to win the World Championship last August. In his Facebook post about the competition, Tom said Fisher “overcame some incredible challenges and impressed me more each time with his determination and desire to conquer.”
Tom thanked Atkins for his support, as well as the crew from Bowhunters of Rockingham.
This year, in the first part of the Triple Crown, Fisher competed at Pipestem Resort State Park in West Virginia in May. After tying for first place, he ended up second after a one-arrow, closest-tocenter shootoff in front of the crowd.
Last month, in the second leg of the Triple Crown in Franklin, Pa., Fisher placed second. He is now one point behind the leader, going into the final leg of the Triple Crown, which will take place this Thursday through Sunday in Nelsonville, Ohio.
Fisher enjoys the sport and said he loves “the competition aspect of it. I like to win.”
“He’s definitely got natural talent,” said Tom. The competitions that Fisher competes in can require a lot of travel, with drives of up to 13 hours away, including the occasional Canadian competition, and some much closer, six hours or less. The farthest Fisher has traveled for a competition was 13 hours to Foley, Ala. The larger competitions have as many as 2,000 participants.
Outside of archery, Fisher enjoys mushroom hunting, fishing and other sports.
While Fisher enjoys soccer, basketball and lacrosse, Tom noted that there are significant scholarship opportunities if he continues to excel in archery. “The odds are better to get help academically,” said Tom. “The activity is on the rise.”
