Hi and welcome. I hope you have tons of fun when you make it to your first event. I'm including an excerpt from the rulebook in regards to archery & bows. I think the highlighted portion can asnwer your question.
Archery (Bows & Crossbows)
For the purpose of archery, Knight Realms allows players to use real bows with boffer-padded arrows (boffer archery). While we allow and encourage real bows for realism and the all important coolness factor, we must stress that safety always comes first.
Boffer arrows do a base of 8 damage. The base damage is high to encourage people to put the time and effort into making a good looking set of props and weapons.
Because they look poor and are inaccurate, Nerf weapons are not allowed at KR. "Packet Archery" (holding a bow in one hand, and throwing spell packets with the other) is also not permitted at KR.
In order to use a bow, you must first pass a test under the supervision of a Rules Marshal. Also, a Marshal will pick one of your arrows at random and take it apart to check and make sure they are safely made – please bring an extra for this purpose. Note that the Marshal picks one arrow randomly, so that you can’t make a good one for the Marshal and skimp on the others; they all need to be top quality.
Bows need to be simple recurve bows with no more than 20 pounds at full draw, and with a Draw length of no more than 26”. Arrows should be fitted for this (26”), keeping in mind that the end will be covered in foam, so you may want them a bit longer.
