Emmet Kapaniuk has been named as the first recipient of the Northern LYTES Youth Development fund.

Kapaniuk, 16 is an up and coming competitive compound bow archer from Whitehorse.

He earned a bronze at the 2022 Junior Pan American Youth and Masters Championships, his first international event, in June.

Needless to say, Kapaniuk is pleased to receive the grant.

“It feels awesome ... I was just scrolling on Instagram and saw on Sport Yukon’s page that they were offering this. I was like ‘Oh, that looks cool. It seems like it could benefit me’ and applied for it and got accepted and it feels good.”

As for why he received the grant, “I think it’s just because ... the level I’m starting to get at,” said Kapaniuk. “I’ve been on Team Canada and stuff in the recent couple months and I think it’s kind of just my work ethic and stuff.”

According to Kapaniuk, those eligible for the grant can get up to $1000.

Kapaniuk will be working with former Olympians Emily Nishikawa and Zach Bell to improve his sports marketing.

“I’ve had a couple meetings with them and it’s just helping you build the brand part of sports,” related Kapaniuk. “They’re at the Olympic level. They’ve worked at brands. They’ve made mistakes before, they said. So it’s just them helping pass along stuff they’ve learned, from what I’ve got out of it so far.”

Kapaniuk said that working with Nishikawa and Bell has been great.

It’s an honour to work with someone who was at the Olympic level or that high caliber. You often don’t get chances like that, especially not here in the Yukon. There’s so few of us that have actually been at that level.”

According to a Sport Yukon press release, Kapaniuk is writing a series of articles documenting his sporting journey.

“I have the first one done ... we talked about the first one and I think we were just going to talk about the other ones as the first one came out. We’re makin’ a plan from there, from the sounds of it,” said Kapaniuk.

The first story came out as part of a Sport Yukon press release. In it, Kapaniuk talks about his first “Outside” experience as being horrible.

“Absolutely! I know after that tournament in 2018, the B.C. one, I stopped shooting for a bit, because I was like, ‘Uh, do I really want to keep doing this?’ but I think it was just the teammates, the people I surrounded myself with, they were very good at wanting to motivate me to get better. I wasn’t the best one; I was the youngest one ... so there was always that push from the older kids that you want to get better than them.”

Kapaniuk is currently hoping to go the the Arctic Winter Games, which are scheduled to take place in the Wood Buffalo region in Alberta Jan. 29 to Feb. 4.

There’s a couple things we have to work out regarding some not 100 per cent clear rules, considering I went down to the Junior Pan Ams.

They’re not really clear – they said you’re ineligible if the committee deems a tournament you’ve been to pretty much too high a level. So we’re not 100 per cent sure. Canada Winter Games doesn’t deem the Junior Pan Ams, just the normal Pan Ams, so if I’m not going down to Arctics, I’ll for sure be at Canada Winter Games.”

The tryouts for the AWG’s are on Sep. 17, so Kapaniuk is hoping he’ll be granted the opportunity to try out for the AWG’s soon.

“I want to, just because the last tournament I’ve gone to was Nationals about a month ago, and I don’t want that to be the last one before I head into Canada Winter Games, because that one’s gonna be a big one, and I know it’s definitely gonna be nerves and stuff to go with it. So if I can go to Arctics and get all that out of the way, feel good about that and then two or three weeks later come into Canada Winter Games, I feel like my performance is going to be that much better.”