USA Shooting Selects the Remainder of its Olympic Team

[USAS]

For Immediate Release
June 3, 2004

USA Shooting Selects the Remainder of its Olympic Team
Rifle, Running Target and Pistol Athletes Named

FORT BENNING, Ga. -- USA Shooting has concluded its Olympic Team Selection Matches, Monday, and the remainder of its2004 Olympic Team has been nominated to the U.S. Olympic Committee for the final approval. The Olympic Shotgun Team finished its selection process in March, so now the entire Shooting Team that will represent the U.S. in Greece this summer is chosen.

The rifle team, which won all of its 10 available quota spots for the 2004 Olympics, had the biggest news of the event, when Matt Emmons, of Browns Mills, N.J., won a spot in each of the three events he participated in. Emmons was just on fire throughout the three competitions as he won the men’s prone and men’s three-position after taking second in men’s air.

“I am just in the mind set to compete right now,” Emmons said after making the team in his second event--men’s prone. “I have been training really hard lately, concentrating on every aspect of the game. And the more I compete the more I am able to practice my approach. I know what kind of mood I need to be in to shoot my best, and I have gotten a feel to how to get there in every competition.

At 23-years-old, Athens will be Emmons’ first Olympic Games. However, Emmons is no stranger to the international competitions. He has won a number of medals at World Cups and is the reigning World Champion in prone. He is also highly respected in the National arena, leading his collegiate rifle team to a first place at the NCAA Championship four years in a row, becoming the 2002 NCAA smallbore champion and pitching a perfect game for his high school baseball team in Pemberton, N.J. He now adds to that list, being the first American to qualify in three Olympic rifle events in over 40 years.

Accompanying Emmons in men’s air rifle will be Sgt. 1st Class Jason Parker (Omaha, Neb.). Parker is the current world record holder in men’s air and was only seven-tenths of a point away from winning a medal in the 2000 Olympics. He says that is what has fueled him for the past four years. The memory of going home empty handed is one he doesn’t want to relive. “That kind of disappointment just doesn’t go away,” Parker said. “I mean someday, I’m sure I will look back and realize fifth place was a pretty good finish for my first Olympics, but not today, and not while I am still training for Athens.”

In women’s air rifle, Emily Caruso (Fairfield, Conn.) and Spc. Hattie Johnson (Athol, Idaho) will be going to their first Olympic Games. Caruso dominated this event and made the team with an eight-point margin over Johnson. Caruso has been training at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs since she graduated from college at Norwich University with a degree in psychology.

Johnson on the other hand, was initially disappointed by her last day’s performance. She had thought that the final she shot was too low to make the Olympic Team. “After that finals, I just got this sinking feeling, I thought ‘Man, I just blew it.’ I had no idea I had won until people started coming up to congratulate me. I think I am still in shock,” Johnson said.

Within the women’s three-position event, the competitors were all so close, that it could have gone several ways. But two young women from Washington, Sarah Blakeslee, of Vancouver, and Morgan Hicks, of Roy, were the ones who finished on top, and therefore named to their first Olympic Team.

Blakeslee, 19, has been a resident athlete at the Olympic Training Complex since graduating from high school last year. She is a silver medalist and quota place winner at the 2003 Pan American Games.

Blakeslee could feel the pressure as it got down to the last couple days in her event, but instead of letting it distract her, the more focused she got. “It gets easy to get caught up in all the excitement of an Olympic Trials,” Blakeslee said. “I remember my first National competition was four years ago at the 2000 Team Trials. I saw so many shooters get reeled into all the pressure. And I knew I couldn’t let that happen. The pressure was definitely there, but I didn’t let it get to me. I shot the scores I knew I could and am blessed to have won.”

For Hicks, 22, she wasn’t sure what to expect. In fact, she didn’t think she even had a chance to qualify in smallbore; the 2004 NCAA Champion in air rifle rightfully thought she would have a better chance in the air event.

“Going into it, I really didn’t expect to qualify in three-position,” Hicks said. “I had been concentrating so hard on my air rifle event, it took my by total surprise. It wasn’t until after that first day that it really hit me I had a shot at this. But no words can explain what I am feeling right now.”

Major Michael Anti (Winterville, N.C.) also surprised himself by qualifying in his secondary event. Anti beat out his close friend and teammate, Sgt. 1st Class Thomas Tamas (Columbus, Ga.) in the last day of men’s prone. “I knew I could still qualify, but I needed more than just a really good score,” Anti said. “I needed someone else to have an off day. Unfortunately, that was Tamas. I know Tamas is a better prone shooter than that. He just had a bad match.

“I also know that it will be pretty tough for someone to beat Emmons and myself in men’s three-position,” Anti continued. “It is definitely our strongest event.”

Anti proved his prediction right later that week, when he and Emmons won the spots in three-position. Emmons ran away with the competition, beating all of his competitors by at least 30 points, whereas Anti made it a little more interesting. Anti shot surprisingly low scores and was on edge after every finals. He did, however, end up in second place by a margin of three points over third.

“I don’t know what was going on,” Anti said of his performance. “Shooting those finals was a grind. I felt more pressure to win this event then I felt to win prone. I have to give credit to the younger rifle shooters though, they didn’t let me win this without a fight. They continue to keep me on my toes.” Anti is now headed to his third Olympic Games.

As for running target, which will be cut from the Olympic lineup after this summer’s Games, the athletes felt an immense amount of pressure to make this 2004 Team. This pressure was seen in the fluctuating scores and felt by the tension in the air. But after three days of competition, the last U.S. Olympic Running Target Team was selected and Adam Saathoff (Hereford, Ariz.) and Koby Holland (Dillon, Mont.) are now in the position to make their mark on this fading event.

Saathoff, a 1996 and 2000 Olympian, looks to make his third time a charm. Unable to medal in the past two Olympics, Saathoff is now confident that this will be his year. “I have been focusing a lot on my mental game,” Saathoff said. “There is only so much actual shooting training you can do, the rest is up to the mental game. Now that this step in the process is over, I will spend a lot of time mastering the mental game I need in Athens.”

A past Olympic Training Center resident athlete, Holland, now spends most of his time in the basement of his brother’s house where he has a two-lane 10m range. Holland fully agrees with Saathoff on the mental issues to this game. “I had never been this focused coming into a match. I set certain goals for myself, and achieved them all. After spending a majority of my time working on the mental aspects, I have been able to compete on a different level than what I used to.”

Pistol had a bit of a different Olympic Team Selection process, very comparable to that of the Shotgun Selections. It started with a competition in the fall of 2003, shooting a two-day event and then waiting until this spring for the Final Olympic Selection Match to shoot the remaining two days and a final.

In men’s air pistol, this definitely made for an exciting face-off this spring. Jason Turner (Rochester, N.Y.) and Sgt. 1st Class Darryl Szarenski (Saginaw, Mich.) finished in the lead last fall, tied for the No. 1 spot, while Brian Zins (Quantico, Va.) was just a few points off that top score. As for this spring, all three individuals held the lead for at least a moment, and their chance to make an Olympic Team came down to the very last shot they took. In the end, it was Szarenski and Turner that made the 2004 Team. And for Turner it was by one-fifths of a point.

“It was very tight,” Turner said. “And now I know what I need to work on going into the Olympics—my concentration. I want to be able to block out everything else, and just concentrate on one shot at a time.”

As for women’s sport pistol, the result was the exact opposite. After the Fall Olympic Selection, Elizabeth Callahan (Upper Marlboro, Md.) and Rebecca Snyder (Grand Junction, Colo.) had gained such a large lead that when it came to this spring, they were basically shoo-ins. They both finished with over a 40-point lead on third-place.

“It was still nerve-racking,” Snyder, 27, said after her win. “I expected to win, but whenever you put Olympic in the name, it adds a little more pressure to the event.”

2004 marks both Snyder and Callahan’s third Olympic Games. Callahan, a 52-year-old retired police officer from Washington, D.C., says she loves this sport because of the challenge it brings every time she steps up to shoot. “I don’t necessarily compete with anyone else,” Callahan said. “It is mostly myself. If I can continue to shoot good scores and continue to love the game, I will continue shoot for as long as I can.”

USA Shooting is recognized by the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) and the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) as the national governing body for the Olympic and international shooting sports in the United States. International shooting includes more than two-dozen different events for both men and women in four different disciplines; pistol, rifle, shotgun and running target. Seventeen of these events are currently part of the Olympic shooting sports program. USA Shooting trains and selects the USA Shooting Team, which represents the United States throughout the year in numerous major international competitions worldwide including the Olympic Games, World Championships, Pan American Games, Championships of the Americas and at ISSF World Cups. For more information, please contact USA Shooting’s Media and Public Relations Director, Sara Greenlee, at 719-866-4896, or by email at sara.greenlee@usashooting.org. For full results from the Final Olympic Team Trials, please log on to www.usashooting.org.