growing. In 2007, I had won a lot of competitions in SCTP – I had no idea that international skeet and bunker trap existed at that point – I only knew about the regular stuff then I met Emily Blount and she took me down to the International Skeet fi eld she was practicing on and let me shoot it for the fi rst time. I think I shot a 16 the fi rst time I had ever shot it, I thought I did pretty well and I knew the state Junior Olympics were coming up in March so I just started training. I qualifi ed for the Junior Olympics my fi rst year, and then the second year, and I just got my heart set on what I wanted and I’ve just been working on it and working on it.
Then you go and win Fall Selection six years later? That was one of the most
heartwarming things I had ever done as part of my career because I had gone to Cyprus, I shot well in Cyprus my fi rst time overseas, and I knew I wasn’t eligible for any awards since I was just a junior but I
was happy with my performance and I loved the experience. Then going into Peru, I thought maybe I had let some people down. I had a lot going on before that, I tried to get a lot of practice in but had a bunch of stuff with school and things that were interfering with that and just got out and practiced as much as I could. When Fall came, I told myself “I’ve just got to do it.” I’m a person who believes in a positive karma type-of-thing – if you convince yourself you can do something, the possibilities are endless so I just sat down and I was shooting every day - 200 rounds a day – not a whole lot, but enough that I was comfortable. When I felt I was at my optimal point, I started to back off on my practice, maybe to 150 rounds a day for the fi rst month-and-a-half before it. Then I backed off to 75 a day. The few days prior to training I bumped it back up towards 200 just to rebuild my stamina, then the day or two prior only shot a couple boxes. Leading into the OTR, I shot really well. I’ve come
to learn that on OTR day, it’s not about how many targets you can hit; you need to make sure your mechanics and your body are working correctly. You need to make sure your background – you’re fi nding your lead spots – in each fi eld’s background. I did everything. And that was my home fi eld too so I was really familiar with the different back- grounds and fi elds. I didn’t know after the fi rst two days where I was standing, but going into the third day, I went ahead and looked and just told myself “If they can do it, I can do it” and I went for it.
How do your peers react? You started shooting back when Vincent Hancock won his fi rst Olympic gold medal.
My peers - I couldn’t ask for a better family. Especially when travelling. Vinnie (Hancock), Frank (Thompson) and Kim (Rhode) have been absolutely phenomenal with talking to me and if I have questions, or if there’s some type of mental
game thing I want to talk about – every shooter has their mental quirks they need to work out. No offense to the coaches, but sometimes just having another shooter’s opinion on what’s going on makes a world of difference. The shooting com- munity is one of the strongest communities I’ve been a part of. It is really, really exciting to be a part of it. Nobody is really too good for anybody.
Advice you would give a new shooter? I would tell them is this motto: Keep Faith. It’s not necessarily a religious motto, it can be if you desire to, but it means keep faith in the things you believe in and in yourself the most. If you believe you can do something, just put 110% of yourself into it and more than likely, you’re going to come out with more than you could have ever imagined.
March 2014 | USA Shooting News
59
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