Archery Stand Transcript
LISA: Hey there my name is Lisa Belcastro and I'm so excited to share with you some inexpensive ways to make sports more accessible to athletes with disabilities. For over a decade I have been working in the disability sport community as an adapted physical education teacher, volunteer, and advocate. Like many who run disability sport programs, funding is often limited. Even on a shoestring budget we must find creative ways to accommodate the needs of every athlete in our program. No one deserves to be left on the sidelines and we're here to make sure that never happens.

Today we'll be talking about archery. This is one of my favorite sports to teach the athletes that I work with. This is because there are many adaptations that can be made to increase independence and make the sport more accessible to all of our athletes. When teaching archery what would you do if one of your athletes struggled with gross or fine motor control? What could you do to make the sport more accessible to those whose range of motion may be limited in their hands and fingers? With some out of the box thinking and creativity we're going to look at inexpensive ways to answer both of those questions.

Today we will be building an adapted PVC archery stand. This idea came to me after realizing the difficulty of adapting archery for athletes with specific degrees of cerebral palsy or limited range of motion in their hands and fingers. This PVC archery stand is very inexpensive, easy to build, very durable, and most importantly it will ensure all of our athletes can participate. Over the years I found that I really enjoy working with PVC. PVC is incredibly durable, easy to work with, and best of all it's really inexpensive. 

To build the adapted archery stand here are the materials that you'll need: PVC, a dowel rod, t-fittings, elbow fittings, and a gear tie. You will also need a couple of tools: a saw, duct tape, permanent marker, measuring tape, PVC primer, and PVC cement. When I built my first piece of equipment I'd never even picked up a saw. You might be a master builder or maybe you've never picked up a tool in your life. Regardless of your comfort level or experience I want to assure you there's nothing to be intimidated by.

Building with PVC is as easy as one, two, three. Step one: Cut the PVC into the lengths you need. Step two: Connect the PVC using the proper fittings. And finally, step three: Cement the pieces into place.

You will need two ten-foot lengths of one inch PVC pipe for this project. Grab your saw and let's start by cutting our PVC pipe into the lengths we need.

First, we're going to take our tape measure we're going to measure out 24 inches. We're going to mark it and we're going to put a letter A on it.

Next, we're going to take our saw and we're going to cut straight down. Next, you're going to need four 12-inch pieces marked with the letter B and two 11-inch pieces marked with the letter C. Now put all these pieces aside they're going to be used for the base of your stand.

Next for the upright of your stand you're going to need one 30-inch piece marked with the letter D and one 12-inch piece marked with the letter E. 

Finally for the arm of your stand you're going to need one 24-inch piece marked with the letter F and one 11-inch piece marked with the letter G.

Alright we're going to start off with our base of our archery stand. You're going to grab the piece marked with the letter A and then you're going to need two 90-degree elbow fittings. You're going to secure them to either end of the piece marked with the letter A and then you're going to grab two of the pieces marked with the letter B. You're going to fit them into the remaining openings of the 90-degree elbow fittings.

Next, you're going to need two t-fittings. You're going to secure them to the other end of the piece mark with the letter B. You're going to grab your remaining two pieces marked with the letter B. Secure them to the outside opening of the t-fitting. 
Next, you're gonna grab your two pieces marked with the letter C and one t-fitting. You're gonna connect those together in a straight line using your t-fitting and then you're going to secure those to the base by fitting them into the remaining openings of the other two t-fittings and that's your base. Now we're going to set that aside and we're going to move forward to the upright of our archery stand. 

The upright of your archery stand is really easy to build. You're going to start off with the piece that you marked with the letter D and you're going to grab a t-fitting. You're going to secure it just like that to one of the ends and then you're going to grab your piece marked with the letter E.

You're going to create a straight line by securing it to the opposite opening of your t-fitting. You'll set that aside and then we're going to move to the arm of our archery stand. You're going to grab your piece marked with the letter F and then you're going to grab your 90-degree elbow fitting. You're going to secure it to one of the ends and then you're going to grab your piece marked with the letter G. Secure it to the opposite opening. For the arm of the stand go ahead and grab the piece marked with the letter F. Measure six inches from one of the ends. Make a mark. We're going to drill a hole straight down. Alright, next you're gonna grab your final piece, which is a t-fitting. You're gonna secure it to the opposite end of the piece marked with the letter G. 

Now we're gonna put the three different pieces together. You'll take the upright and you'll secure it to the final opening of the t-fitting and then you'll take the arm secure it to the opening of the t-fitting and that's your archery stand.

Now that I've completed my piece of equipment and I'm happy with how it looks, I need to cement it into place. This will ensure that it stays strong and working for years to come. In this step we're essentially going to take the piece of equipment apart and put it back together again but there's a reason for that. I find it helpful to build the piece of equipment to make sure that I'm happy with the measurements in the structure prior to cementing the pieces together. Let's say I cemented the pieces together as I was building it. What if I get to the end and I realized my measurements were off? The problem is the cement is so strong it's almost permanent. If I realize I made a mistake after they were cemented together I may have just wasted a lot of time and resources. 

Now we're going to cement our archery stand together but there's a couple of joints that you don't want to cement. Here's why: We want to make sure that this is able to move back and forth and that our archery stand is able to move side to side. So here's the joints that you don't want to cement: Anything that touches a letter C. So that's going to be here, here, here, here, and here. Now we're going to cement our archery stand together. This can get a little messy so I put down a piece of cardboard. Let's get started.

I'm going to pull apart my first joint. I'm going to grab my primer and I'm going to prime the piece of PVC and the inside of the joint.
Next, I'm going to need my cement. I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to cement the PVC pipe and the inside of the inside of the fitting. I'm going to hold it into place just for a minute to allow the cement to dry.

Now I'm going to cement the rest of the archery stand together being mindful not to cement any joints that touch a piece marked with the letter C.

Now we're going to utilize our archery stand. First thing we need to do is secure our bow to the stand. We're going to do that using duct tape. Rip off a good long piece. You're going to need to secure above the t-fitting and below the t-fitting. Go ahead rip off another long piece of duct tape. Okay it's secure. Now we're gonna have to make our trigger. We're gonna use a gear tie and a dowel rod to do that. Take the gear tie and we're gonna wrap it all the way down the dowel rod. We're going to take the trigger and we're going to put it inside that hole that we drilled on our archery stand. Next, we're going to pull the bow string back behind the trigger. You're going to see that the archery stand can move the bow side to side and front to back. Go ahead Jake, you can fire.

I told you that was going to be easy! In just a few simple steps we've created a piece of equipment that increases independence and accessibility. With all the benefits this archery stand brings it can be built for just 15 dollars.

Be sure to tag us on social media with your builds. Links to our social media accounts are available in the description. I'd like to thank the U.S. Department of State especially the Sports Diplomacy Division and the University of Tennessee Center for Sport, Peace, and Society. 

We hope this project design serves you and your athletes well. Thanks for watching.