Sporting Schools
In 1966, Leigh Perkins launched a successful fly-fishing school in Manchester, eventually expanding into Missouri, Michigan, Virginia, Idaho and Massachusetts. As of 2006, seven Orvis schools had graduated about 40,000 students. The first Orvis shooting school, based on the long-standing British model, began training upland bird hunters in 1973. This program has also successfully grown to include schools such as Mays Pond Plantation in Monticello, Florida and Orvis's shooting preserve at Orvis Sandanona, in Millbrook, New York.
While Perkins was forthright in his primary goal for the schools to attract new Orvis customers, the schools have also become important mentors in the values and traditions of both sports.
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Famous quotes containing the words sporting and/or schools:
“The Boston papers had never told me that there were seals in the harbor. I had always associated these with the Esquimaux and other outlandish people. Yet from the parlor windows all along the coast you may see families of them sporting on the flats. They were as strange to me as the merman would be. Ladies who never walk in the woods, sail over the sea. To go to sea! Why, it is to have the experience of Noah,—to realize the deluge. Every vessel is an ark.”
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