COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (July 3, 2019)
In honor of America’s birthday, Ashley Carroll ensured that the U.S. Flag would wave and the Star-Spangled Banner would echo from the range in Lonato, Italy as she was crowned World Champion in Women’s Trap.
Led by Carroll, Team USA's Trap shooting contingent got the fireworks started early on the eve of America's Independence Day as part of the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Championships. Wednesday’s results included celebrating a World Champion, seven other top-15 individual results, a gold-medal team sweep in Women’s Trap, a bronze-medal performance in Junior Men’s Trap, and three Finalists.
Leading this charge was Carroll (Solvang, California) with the second-best Qualification score of 120/125, which led her into the Finals of a World Championship once again after a sixth-place result in 2017. This time Trap supremacy would be hers and it is something she’s been building toward, with this her seventh World Championships appearance already as a 24-year-old. She beat China’s Xiaojing Wang by one-target in the Final, missing just two of her last 10 targets while Wang dropped three. Wang has finished runner-up for the second consecutive year at Worlds.
In winning the world title, Carroll becomes the first U.S. women to earn a World Championship medal, along with the world title, since Cindy Gentry in 1999. It’s the first Trap medal for Team USA at a World Championship, men or women, since bronze by Bret Erickson in 2006.
She would help lead the U.S. contingent to the top spot of the podium in the team match as well, aided by the great all-around shooting from all three U.S. team members. The U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit’s (USAMU) Rachel Tozier (Liberty, Missouri) and Kayle Browning (Wooster, Arkansas)
