When archery practice moved to the Ping Center, safety and storage concerns arose.
Among the sounds of motivational music, running gears of ellipticals and falling weights, students may hear arrows whizzing through the gym and landing with a smack onto the designated target during their next visit to the Ping Center.
Ohio University’s Archery Club moved its practice space to Ping this academic year due to Grover Center's gym being shut down.
While looking for a new space to practice aim and accuracy, the club ran into problems concerning safety and facility proximity for its members.
“We couldn’t find anywhere that would clear it,” Skyler Green, president of the Archery Club, said.
After Green learned Grover’s gym would be unavailable to practice in, he said it took about eight months to find a new home for the team. The team had been practicing in Grover since its start two and a half years ago.
The Archery Club and Ping are still becoming acquainted with each other, with problems like safety and storage arising in the first few months.
“It really isn’t that dangerous," Green said. "You’ve got a lot of advanced archers, and anyone who’s not advanced starts out with a small bow and gets taught."
Meagan Wain, the assistant director of Campus Recreation, said questions surrounding bringing bows into the building, storage of the large targets and safety were brought up when the archery team began practicing at Ping.
“The first couple weeks we were just watching and making sure everything was running smoothly,” Wain said.
Having archery practice in Ping takes some risk management, Wain said. If anyone is injured inside the building, Ping is responsible for responding to the incident.
When the club practices, it has a health and safety officer who is trained to respond. Separate from the club, when the academic archery class has an accident, Ping team members would respond to those incidents, Wain said.
Another problem is how to safely bring the bows and arrows, which can be considered "weapons," into the facility, Wain said.
When a student brings his or her equipment into Ping, they stop at the front desk to open the case to make sure the only contents are bows and arrows.
Along with bringing possible weapons into the university's gym, Ping employees were worried about other aspects: flying projectiles.
“We didn’t want any damage from the arrows,” Wain said.
In August, Ping workers spent a month and a half installing netting to block arrows from hitting the wall, and signs have been placed in front of the door — something not in place the first few weeks — to warn individuals about the arrows in the practice space.
“I think it’s all right if they’re taking the right precautions with signs,” Samantha Roe, a freshman studying pre-med chemistry, said.
Roe added that if the sign is in place, students and faculty should know not to go in the practice space without caution.
“The signs are a must,” she said. “If there wasn’t one, I wouldn’t know.”
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