Joe Imel/Daily NewsCumberland Trace Elementary School physical education teacher Charmaine Forshee stays on target by coaching the Warren County Archery Team.

Coaching has always kept Charmaine Forshee on target.

The physical education teacher at Cumberland Trace Elementary School is probably best known for her recent expansion of the school’s two-year-old archery team to include students from around the county.

But Forshee’s coaching experience stretches far beyond recently taking the newly formed Warren County Archery Team to its first competition in Trigg County.

In 1981, Forshee was the last coach for Western Kentucky University’s gymnastics team prior to the program being replaced with the school’s volleyball team.

The Virginia native said she attended Western to become a physical education instructor while competing on the gymnastics team and was asked to begin coaching when she graduated.

After completing a master’s degree in physical education, Forshee said she began looking for a job in the Warren County Public Schools. But as the district was much smaller at the time, Forshee had to wait until a position became available and became certified in elementary education, where she taught fourth grade until the district began offering P.E. classes in elementary schools.

In 1988, she began teaching physical activities to students at Cumberland Trace and Rich Pond elementary schools. Nineteen years later, she’s still at Cumberland Trace.

Forshee said she became interested in the archery team when it was first started in 2006 by Dan Melear, the former family resource coordinator for the school.

After becoming certified to coach archery, Forshee said she saw an opportunity for her daughter, Jessica Taylor, 19 – who is a special needs student at Greenwood High School – to excel at a sport.

“One thing I loved about the program was that all students can do this, whether they are special needs or in a wheelchair,” she said. “It’s not that they have to be a fast runner or have a lot of strength, any child can do this.”

Once a week, the team practices in the gym on a row of color-coded targets with about 10 sets of bows and arrows. For the first time, the team has been opened to the county and Forshee said the number of students has more than doubled with members coming from Drakes Creek Middle School and Greenwood High School.

The team was expanded to make it big enough to compete against other archery teams. During its first competition in Trigg County, Forshee said two of the students scored nearly 200 out of a possible 300.

Forshee said while she was never interested in archery when she was in school, she loves the rewarding feeling of coaching students that has stayed the same over the years.

“Seeing the satisfaction on their faces when it all comes together and they can hit their target is very rewarding,” she said. “When they come back and said ‘I did it, I did it,’ I say, ‘I knew you could do it.’ ”