Left to right, coach Brock Paton, Micaela Wong, Brigitte Coulombe and Robb Marty celebrate bringing their medals home to Osoyoos after winning provincial and national competitions. They were congratulated by the mayor and council at the Monday regular meeting at Town Hall. (Dale Boyd / Osoyoos Times)

By Dale Boyd

Osoyoos Times

Some of the first students to come out of an indoor archery school funded in large part by the Town of Osoyoos have brought home some hardware.

Micaela Wong and Brigitte Coulombe both brought home gold medals in their respective divisions of Archery Canada’s Indoor Mail Match competition and Robb Marty took home the silver medal at a provincial indoor championship in Victoria.

All three were congratulated by Mayor Sue McKortoff and town council at the regular meeting on June 17.

The town-sponsored indoor archery school helped foster a growing interest in the sport for Wong.

“It’s great, I’m just glad that Osoyoos is one of the few towns that gives resources to something like archery, to be able to do a hobby like this where in a lot of other places you wouldn’t have the opportunity to do it. Especially as a woman in archery, I think it is actually making a name for ourselves,” Wong said.

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She brought home the gold in the archer division in a competition held across Canada which has competitors shooting 10 rounds of three arrows over 13 weeks.

Coulombe entered the national Canada-wide shoot with all Canadian yeoman, the name used for first-time archers, bringing the gold medal to Osoyoos as well.

“It was great, we were looking for something to do, I found something I learned a lot from and quite enjoyed,” Coulombe said.

Coach Brock Paton is a national champion of 10 years and soon heading to a world competition being held in Canada for the first time. He thanked the town for the sponsorship of the program, which has been well-attended.

Funding from the Town of Osoyoos and a one-time grant from the BC Senior Games, helped Paton and the town work together to open the Osoyoos Traditional Archery School in 2018.

“We were booked solid, just to give you an idea, we had 45 arrows, I calculated they were shot 80,000 times,” Paton told town council Monday. “A lot of shooting going on. The town has been very successful.”