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LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. — Lancaster County’s Casey Kaufhold made her Olympic medal dream a reality after winning a mixed-team archery bronze in Paris.
It’s a journey that began at the Lancaster Archery Academy in East Lampeter Township. She says it’s support from where it all started that helped her achieve her ultimate goal.

“It’s just surreal. It’s something I’ve been striving for a long time, but to think I’ve accomplished it so soon is pretty wild. One of my wildest dreams,” said Kaufhold. “Seeing all the support, not just from my family, but from Lancaster as well as a whole after we won the bronze mix team [was really neat]. I can’t tell you how long it took me to go through every text message, every Facebook message, every Instagram DM, like, everything. It was so cool to see that many people watched.”
It was support felt overseas by Kaufhold, and a celebratory feeling felt here in Lancaster as if her hometown academy was right there with her.
The Lancaster Archery Academy hosts a Friday morning coffee club that just so happened to be at the same time as the mixed-team archery event and when Kaufhold’s final arrow solidified the bronze medal, jubilation erupted.
“Everybody just kind of paused mid-bite as the match started. Things go crazy here as she shoots that last arrow and people are jumping up and down. We were yelling, it was awesome,” said Bryan Brady, Lancaster Archery Academy’s team lead.

The opportunity for one of their athletes to reach the pinnacle of the sport is something that the Lancaster Archery Academy has been striving for since day one.
“There are so few sporting academies that can truly say that they had the full breadth from the person who was first picking up the bow to somebody who has won an Olympic medal and everything in between,” said Brady. “It was the mission. It was the idea of saying that we can take anybody and help them achieve their Olympic dreams.”
However, the job is not done, both Kaufhold and her academy have sights on inspiring the next generation of archers. A goal to carry on the same community sentiment that got Kaufhold to where she is today.

“My goal, of course, other than being an Olympian or a medalist, is to just give back to the sport,” said Kaufhold. “I want to inspire people to try hard and want to reach their goals, even try archery or just be a good sportsman.”