Cedar Park teen aiming for gold in archery at Paralympic Games in Paris next month

Four years ago, Jordan White had never picked up a bow and arrow. Now, the 15-year-old Cedar Park boy is headed to Paris in August to represent the United States in the Paralympic Games.

"When you watch him shoot, he does very well at screening out external distractors," said Roger Koss, a former coach who still mentors Jordan. He said the teen will be the youngest archer to make the U.S. Paralympics team. "His drive and his focus keeps him really tuned in to what he’s doing."

The other member of the Paralympic team who shoots in Jordan's open recurve category will be going to the competition for the fifth time, said Koss.

The Paralympics are an international multisport event involving athletes with a range of disabilities. Those games will run from Aug. 28 to Sept. 8 after the Summer Olympics. There are six members on the 2024 U.S. Paralympics archery team, including Jordan.

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Jordan, who is going to be a sophomore at Hill Country Christian School of Austin, was born with his right leg shorter than his left leg. He has been through 20 operations to address the issue, including ongoing leg-lengthening procedures, he said.

His right leg is now 7 inches shorter than his left leg. He wears a foot-on-foot prosthesis that has him standing on his right foot on top of a plastic foot.

"My leg does cause a lot of issues in my shooting," he said. "I put 80% of my weight on my left leg at full draw, which makes shooting more difficult."

In 2020 , Jordan said, he had been planning to play baseball at the local YMCA, but the season was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The organization offered an archery class instead, and that's where he discovered his passion for the sport.

"I fell in love with it because of the feeling when a shot breaks perfectly and hits right in the center of the target," he said. "That feeling is unparalleled."

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He said archery becomes more difficult "as you progress through the sport and compete against better competitors and better athletes."

"That drive to better myself through archery ," Jordan said, " kept me sticking around in the sport."

An archer scores the highest number of points in a competition by hitting the innermost ring of the target.

Jordan competes in the recurved bow category, which has limbs at the top and bottom of the bow that curve away from the archer. The other Paralympics category is compound bow, which features mechanical pulleys, telescopic sights and release aids to assist accuracy.

On a recent morning, Jordan stood in a vacant lot in Cedar Park shooting arrows at a target set at about 230 feet (70 meters) away, the distance used in the Olympics and Paralympics. He placed an arrow on the bowstring and drew back the string, which required 40 pounds of force. He positioned the string so that part of it touched his nose and chin, looked through a sight to aim and then released the arrow.

His mother, Amy White, walked to the target to add up his score after he shot several arrows. Jordan said he is shooting about 100 arrows six days a week to prepare for the competition. He also works with a sports psychologist on his focus because tournaments can sometimes be four to five hours long.

When Jordan first began competing in local and statewide tournaments , he faced athletes who had no disabilities, said his mother. But that changed when Koss said he first saw Jordan shooting in a tournament in College Station about two years ago.

"I knew he had something where he could definitely join or start on the Paralympic track," said Koss.

He said he worked with Jordan by taking him to national and international competitions to get classified, a requirement to make it to the Paralympics. Classification involves an evaluation by a physical therapist at a tournament to determine the range, function and limiting factors of an athlete.

To make it onto the U.S. Paralympic archery team, Jordan competed in three tournaments in Arizona and Florida during April and May. At the last competition in Florida, he had to wait 10 to 15 minutes until the final scores were announced to see who would qualify to go to Paris.

"Those few minutes were the most stressful, nerve-wracking minutes of my life," Jordan said. He said he was ecstatic to find out he had earned a place on the team.

When he gets to the competition in Paris, he will first have to shoot a ranking round of 72 arrows in groups of six arrows each. If he scores well, he will proceed to the elimination rounds where he could shoot anywhere from nine to 16 arrows competing against an opponent.

The U.S. Paralympic archery team is paying for his trip to Paris, but he is still raising money to compete in other tournaments to gain more experience.

Amy White said she is not surprised by her son's achievements. She said Jordan studies archery and is interested in math and science.

"I certainly wasn't surprised about his perseverance and his determination ," she said. "He's had that since he was a young age."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Cedar Park teen aiming for gold in archery at Paralympic Games in Paris next month