By Carlos Jimenez (@carlosjimmenezz):
On October 1st Shimpei Koike, the archery club’s equipment manager, noticed that the clubs storage locker had been broken into.
“Looked like they broke the lock with a sledgehammer”, said club president Christopher Plumeau.
Koike was going to gather the club’s equipment in preparation for practice when he walked into a barren locker.
“Fifteen easton bows, five ragim wildcats, a dozen arrows, four arrow tubes and a toolbox [were taken],” Koike said.
According to Koike, the stolen equipment totaled a loss of just under $3,000.
“[The team was] planning on moving equipment to a new storage locker so it was the worst timing ever,”Plumeau said.
A GoFundMe account was created the day of the incident with $3,500 as the goal set in place.
The GoFundMe account was open until October 9th, and the archery club was able to surpass their goal and reach a grand total of $4,700.
“[I was] glad to see the archery community’s support and the school’s as well,” Koike said.
To show their appreciation, the SJSU archery club will host the Spartan 600 tournament on November 11th.
“Now they have to go through two doors [in order to steal equipment]”, Koike said about the team’s new storage unit.
The archery club has contacted the police and local pawn shops in hopes of finding their missing equipment but hasn’t had any luck thus far.
“There is some sort of silver lining to this,” Koike said.
With the money they raised, the archery club is now ready to purchase new equipment and continue practicing their craft.
