COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (July 15, 2019)
All it took Monday at the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) Junior World Cup was a little bit of Faith. Faith Pendergrass that is after the 18-year-old California native earned the gold medal in the Women’s Trap event in Suhl, Germany.
Pendergrass (Valley Springs, California) and her teammates put the exclamation point on a great couple weeks for U.S. Women’s Trap during a European stint that also included World Championships in Italy. Along with individual gold, Pendergrass helped lead the U.S. Women’s Junior Trap team that also included Junior World Championship finalists Carey Garrison (Crossville, Tennessee) and Nicole Manhave (Longview, Texas) to a silver-medal team finish. Today’s medal bonanza comes on top of two women’s team (Open + Junior) titles at Worlds along with individual gold for Ashley Carroll as well in Italy.
Pendergrass was 16th at Worlds after a 103/125 but was seven shots better this time around to earn her the third-best Qualification score. In the Final, she’d be facing off against Junior World Champion Selin Ali of Romania and fourth-place finisher Gaia Ragazzini of Italy. Pendergrass began the Finals match with six misses over her first 25 targets. After a miss on target 37, Pendergrass would focus in and miss just two additional targets over her final 13 chances. Ali was in the running to challenge Pendergrass as the two battled for Suhl supremacy, but the Romanian World Champ missed five of her last six shots to ensure a four-target victory for Faith.
Pendergrass, Garrison and Manhave would earn a second-place team finish with Garrison finishing ninth after a score of 107 while Manhave was 20th with a 105. They were nine targets behind the winning Chinese team
