With a brand-new computer-aided scoring system at his disposal, Jerry Westfall can promise competitors in West Virginia's Archery in the Schools Tournament at least one thing:

"We won't be sitting around waiting for the awards ceremonies anymore," said Westfall, the state's Archery in the Schools coordinator.

Last spring, 500 competitors waited anxiously while officials pored over scorecards and laboriously hand-tabulated results. Westfall said that shouldn't happen in 2009.

"With the new system, the scorecards are optically scanned and the results are tabulated instantaneously," he said. "A process that used to take several minutes per scorecard now takes about one second."

A volunteer official will still accompany each archer to his or her target and determine how each arrow scored. But instead of writing a number on a scorecard, the official will use a No. 2 pencil to blacken a circle that corresponds to the arrow's numeric score. A scanner will read the scorecard and a computer will total the score for all the archer's arrows and rank all the competitors' scores from top to bottom.

Westfall learned about the computerized system last spring when he attended a meeting of state Archery in the Schools coordinators in Kentucky.

"I saw that this was exactly what we needed," Westfall recalled. "I came back and told Scott Warner, who had been the program's coordinator before I took it over. He said we'd need to find a source of funding for it."

They found it in Beyond the Backyard, a fledgling organization that seeks to get young people involved in outdoor-related activities. Beyond the Backyard's founder, Charleston lawyer Bobby Warner, agreed to purchase two scorecard scanners.

"The scanners cost about $1,500 total," Westfall said. "We got the scoring software for free from the Archery in the Schools folks over in Kentucky. We're using our own agency laptops to run the system."

West Virginia became the fourth state to turn to computer-aided scoring. Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio are the others.

Westfall said the system will "take the uncertainty" out of the scoring process. "In the past, there had always been a chance that someone's score might have been miscalculated. Now, with the computers, there will be no doubt about the results - and the closing ceremonies will start on time."

Reach John McCoy at 348-1231 or johnmc...@wvgazette.com.

With a brand-new computer-aided scoring system at his disposal, Jerry Westfall can promise competitors in West Virginia's Archery in the Schools Tournament at least one thing:

"We won't be sitting around waiting for the awards ceremonies anymore," said Westfall, the state's Archery in the Schools coordinator.

Last spring, 500 competitors waited anxiously while officials pored over scorecards and laboriously hand-tabulated results. Westfall said that shouldn't happen in 2009.

"With the new system, the scorecards are optically scanned and the results are tabulated instantaneously," he said. "A process that used to take several minutes per scorecard now takes about one second."

A volunteer official will still accompany each archer to his or her target and determine how each arrow scored. But instead of writing a number on a scorecard, the official will use a No. 2 pencil to blacken a circle that corresponds to the arrow's numeric score. A scanner will read the scorecard and a computer will total the score for all the archer's arrows and rank all the competitors' scores from top to bottom.

Westfall learned about the computerized system last spring when he attended a meeting of state Archery in the Schools coordinators in Kentucky.

"I saw that this was exactly what we needed," Westfall recalled. "I came back and told Scott Warner, who had been the program's coordinator before I took it over. He said we'd need to find a source of funding for it."

They found it in Beyond the Backyard, a fledgling organization that seeks to get young people involved in outdoor-related activities. Beyond the Backyard's founder, Charleston lawyer Bobby Warner, agreed to purchase two scorecard scanners.

"The scanners cost about $1,500 total," Westfall said. "We got the scoring software for free from the Archery in the Schools folks over in Kentucky. We're using our own agency laptops to run the system."

West Virginia became the fourth state to turn to computer-aided scoring. Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio are the others.

Westfall said the system will "take the uncertainty" out of the scoring process. "In the past, there had always been a chance that someone's score might have been miscalculated. Now, with the computers, there will be no doubt about the results - and the closing ceremonies will start on time."

Reach John McCoy at 348-1231 or johnmc...@wvgazette.com.