Five Titles Awarded on Day Two of USA Shooting National Championships in Georgia
OutdoorHub 06.05.13
The first five titles of the USA Shooting National Championships (USASNC) for Rifle and Pistol were awarded today as National Champions were declared in Women’s Air Rifle, Men’s Three-Position Rifle, Men’s Standard and Center Fire Pistol; as well as Junior Sport Pistol.
Holding on to her Day 1 lead in the Women’s Air Rifle event, 2012 Olympian and defending National Champion Sarah Scherer (Woburn, Mass.) retained her National Champion crown with 851 points. The top-three positions in this event remained the same from Day 1 as Amy Sowash (Richmond, Ky.) held on to second place with 839.6 points and National Team member Sarah Beard (Danville, Ind.) also remained in third place with 827.4 points. With their top-three finishes, Scherer and Beard are once again named to the National Team with Sowash also earning a berth on the National Team.
Elizabeth Marsh ( Cleburne County, Ark.) won the gold in the Junior division with 824.9 points – a score that put her fourth overall and earned her a spot on the Junior National Team. In second for Junior Women’s Air Rifle is Elizabeth Gratz (Sigel, Ill.) with 836.3 – a score that put her in fifth-place overall. In third is Dacotah Faught (Amenia, N.D.) with 818.3 points.
Just as in Women’s Air Rifle- the top-three positions in Men’s Three-Position Rifle remained the same after Day 2 as U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU) shooter and four-time Olympian Jason Parker (Omaha, Neb.) retained his National Championship title in this event with 2357 points.
“I’ve been working very hard this spring adjusting to the new ISSF rule changes,” Parker said. “I worked especially hard with my coach Tom Tamas on standing and building a new finals routine. The new finals have quite a few new challenges for the shooters that were brought up under different rules, but I was happy that all of the hard work towards them paid off!”
Retaining second place and winning the silver medal is Dempster Christenson (Sioux Falls, S.D.) with 2342 points and Parker’s USAMU and 2012 Olympic teammate Michael McPhail (Darlington, Wis.) placed third with 2340 points. Parker and McPhail also have been renewed as members of the National Team with Christenson being promoted to the National Team with his second-place finish.
In Junior Men’s Three-Position Rifle, Garrett Spurgeon (Canton, Mo.) defended his gold medal with a score of 2324 – a score that placed him sixth overall. Connor Davis (Shelbyville, Ky.) took second with 2323 points and Ryan Anderson (Fairbanks, Alaska) took third with 2317 points. All three of these athletes have re-qualified for berths on the National Junior Team.
During the awards ceremony, National Rifle Coach Marcus Raab announced that Scherer, Sowash, Beard, Parker, Christenson and McPhail would also be named to the World Cup team to compete in Granada, Spain in July.
The final scores in Women’s Air Rifle and Men’s Three-Position Rifle are a combined total of points including qualification scores from yesterday, today and additional points awarded for placing in each day’s final (Eight additional points awarded for first, seven points for second, six points for third and so on for all finals positions) as laid out under USA Shooting’s new National Championship and World Cup team selection procedures for this event. For more information on this amendment, please click here.
