About Portage Archery Club

A little history behind how the Portage Archery Club began…
In 2005, the Portage school’s curriculum director asked Julie Jordahl, who was an elementary PE teacher for Portage Schools if she would be willing to get trained in NASP to add archery to the elementary phy-ed program. At the time she had been involved in 4H archery for several years using recurve bows and was ready to switch over to Genesis compound bows that would be used in the school program.

Julie worked with Casey Krueger from the DNR to get our first couple of starter kits, contacted various archery clubs in the area and various hunting sport organizations to donate for more equipment or sponsor state and national trips.

Equipment arrived in 2006, after that year’s state shoot, so she began teaching NASP at the John Muir school in gym class in May of 2006 and continued that summer during summer school. In January of 2007, the archery club was told by the district that there wasn’t a budget to compete at the state tournament in February. Julie applied through the curriculum director to go to the NASP state shoot as a workshop. She then pulled together the four top shooters getting parental and school permission to take those four students along to get a better understanding of registration on site. Two of the four students ended up shooting in the top 4 of their grades and qualified for nationals. The two families and Julie traveled on their own to nationals to get a better understanding of how nationals worked.

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In 2008, the archery club started practice in December to get prepared for the February state shoot. There were about 35 students registered and prepared to compete. Unfortunately, school was closed in our area due to a terrible snowstorm. School policy was “no school-no sport, extracurricular or school activities allowed”. Wisconsin Dells had the same problem as Portage - their school closed due to weather as well.

One 5th grade student had her own Genesis bow and her mom who worked for the school system drove up to state on their own. This was one of the same students Julie had taken to state the year before, in 2007. That student placed 2nd that year and placed 1st in 2008. Julie, along with the Dells coach tried to have a site in the Dells
sanctioned with some NASP top leaders. At first it was yes, then the yes turned to a no… Wisconsin would have more representation at nationals if they allowed those schools to hold their own shoot and certainly could not take away from those who made it to the actual state shoot. It was then that Julie started conversations with Wisconsin NASP coaches and leaders that our state shoot should be
held later during better weather if there is no fair way to make-up missing state. A vote among Wisconsin coaches changed the state shoot date to late March or early April. The archery program continued to grow in numbers and grade levels. In 2009, we had more than doubled in size.

Every year the archery club has qualified at state for nationals. Whether it was one team or all three (elementary, middle, and high school), the club has always had a group of archers to send. When Julie left the program in 2017 because of health issues, Portage archery had about 130 students in the program in grades 4-12.

Our home tournament was named after Julie – the Portage On Target For Life Jordahl Classic tournament. Our club also has a side competition with local school archery clubs for the Jordahl Traveling Trophy. It was her dream that archery would be a steppingstone in students’ lives, one that would enable them to achieve great things. Teaching archery was and still is a great passion of hers and the archery club is a legacy, a tribute to her love and dedication to
the students of the Portage Community School District.