COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (April 13, 2018)
Though some may be nervous on Friday the 13th, you would never know it from the more than 200 women’s rifle athletes filling the Olympic Training Center campus, eagerly awaiting their chance to compete tomorrow at the 25th annual National Junior Olympic Shooting Championships (NJOSC) for Rifle and Pistol.
While they have their sights set on earning NJOSC medals and National Junior Team nominations, these athletes will also be competing for the chance to represent the United States at the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Championship August 31 – September 14 in Changwon, South Korea. For more information on World Championship Team selection procedures for Junior athletes, click here[1].
Everyone competing at the NJOSC had to earn the right to compete at this event - only 32 percent of Women’s Air Rifle and 16 percent of Women’s Three-Position Rifle athletes nationally earned invitations to this prestigious match. Invitations to the three-week-long National Junior Olympics were only sent to 763 athletes Rifle and Pistol athletes representing 49 states. These athletes were selected based on their finishes at the state-level Junior Olympic matches which totaled 2,408 competitors.
This year’s competition will also feature the new ISSF shooting format which means the Women’s Rifle and Air Pistol events will now feature the same number of shots (60) as the men. They will also shoot the same number of shots (120) in Three-Position Rifle. Please note: Qualification scores for women in this match utilized the old ISSF format and were based on 40 shots in Air Rifle and 60 in Three-Position Rifle.
The week of Women’s Rifle competition starts with Three-Position Rifle. With last year’s top-two finishers in this event aging out of the match, it
