HELENA — Sibling archer duo Jackson and Tana Speeg are what their father, and President of the Lewis and Clark Archers Roy Speeg calls “inseparable”. And together, they’ve won more archery titles than one could count on their hands.
“So right now, I've won three national championships. So I have three bowls at home. And then I won six state tournaments,” Tana said.
“I'm a defending champion in the state. And I think I'm still the defending champion of National Field,” Jackson said.
But now they’re focused on what’s to come. The duo practices about five times a week.
“So right now we're preparing for state outdoor, which is in Thompson Falls on June 4th, and 5th. And then after that, there's State field in Butte on June 24, and 25,” Tana said.
They both started their archery careers in 4-H.
“So we started in 4H. And it was just a lot of fun to shoot against all those kids. But we kind of evolved from that. And so we started doing more with more professional bows. And so it gave us more opportunity when we started doing more outside of 4-H,” Tana said.
As they move forward in the world of archery, there’s no limit to what they can do. For Tana, she has just progressed from bowhunter to freestyle.
“Like the kids have said, 4-H is a great starting point. They have a lot of bows that they've received through grants from different organizations, you know, nationally. So it's all beginner equipment. And then from there, there's groups in the area. For the National Field Archers Association, of course, the Lewis and Clark archers are a member of that. We're also a member of Montana Archery Association Incorporated, which is our direct link to NFA. Then there's USA archery, which is the route you need to take if you want to be pursuing Olympic dreams. And under that is a JOAD program, which is a junior Olympic Archer development program, which there's a club in town, Elkhorn JOAD. And then they've also started an S3DA Club, which is a scholastic 3D Club, which is for kids up through, I think it's 18 or 19 years old. And they have a lot of scholarship opportunities there,” Roy said.
And though they’re only 13 and 14 the Speegs are already looking into Olympic and collegiate archery opportunities.
