Skeet shooter Amber English (Colorado Springs, Colo., right., pictured ) didn’t have to travel far to bring home her first USA Shooting National Championship. On the final day of the USA Shooting National Championships for Shotgun – held at the USA Shooting International Shotgun Range on Fort Carson – the 23-year-old local skeet athlete proved that all the training she’s put in since her 2012 National Championships bronze medal has paid off.
English, who was leading entering today’s final with 216 of 225 targets (course of fire had been consolidated to 225 targets due to weather delays and time constraints), tied in the gold-medal match with Spring Selection runner-up Haley Dunn, (Muenster, Texas) 14-14. English won the match in a shoot off, 4-3.
“I love those situations a lot because it tests me,” she said. “I’ve been working really hard and changed a lot of things…pretty much took last year off to finish up school so it was really exciting (to win). Now I’ve come back from the year off and I feel like a new competitor; I feel stronger and better than I ever have and have to figure out how to put it all back together again.”
Junior athlete Morgan Craft (Muncy Valley, Pa.) won the bronze-medal match over fellow junior Brandy Drozd, (Bryan Texas) 12-11.
This year’s National Championships followed the new International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) finals with one slight modification: The six finalists entered a semifinal carrying over their qualification score. A 15-shot semifinal was then conducted with that score plus the qualifying score figuring into an overall total to determine shooters for both the gold/silver medal and the bronze-medal matches.
Making her first competitive appearance since the 2012 London Olympics, five-time Olympic medalist Kim Rhode (El Monte, Calif.) finished seventh overall – just one target out of qualifying for the finals.
Many of the women who competed in the Women’s Open final also made appearances in the Juniors final; including gold and silver medalists Drozd and Dania Vizzi (Odessa, Fla.). Drozd, who led the juniors going into today’s final with 212, won the gold-medal match, 13-12.
Sydney Carson (North Liberty, Ind.) defeated Gayla Gregory (College Station, Texas) 12-11 in the bronze-medal match.
On the men’s side, 2012 Olympian Frank Thompson (Alliance, Neb.) had led over the two days entering today’s final with 217, but was defeated in the gold-medal match by Dustin Perry (Crockett, Texas). Perry won the gold-medal match over Thompson, 14-13.
Robert Johnson (Phoenix, Ariz.) won the bronze-medal match over Jon Michael McGrath (Tulsa, Okla.), 15-14.
In the Juniors’ competition, Phillip Jungman (Caldwell, Texas) won his gold-medal match over Spring Selection silver medalist T.J. Bayer (College Station, Texas). Remington McBee (Brady, Texas) won the bronze medal after a three-way shoot off with fourth-place finisher Luis “Taz” Gloria (Tucson, Ariz.) and fifth-place Granger DeWitt (Bryan, Texas).
View complete scores from the USA Shooting National Championships for Shotgun here: http://www.usashooting.org/7-events/101-match-results/nationalresults.
View and download images from this event here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usashooting/sets/72157634930471927/.
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About USA Shooting:
USA Shooting, a 501c3 non-profit corporation, was chartered by the United States Olympic Committee as the National Governing Body for the sport of shooting in April 1995. USA Shooting’s mission is to prepare American athletes to win Olympic medals, promote the shooting sports throughout the U.S. and govern the conduct of international shooting in the country. Check us out on the web at www.usashooting.org and on Twitter at twitter.com/USAShooting.