MOSCOW (September 4, 2017) - Ashley Carroll and Derek Haldeman may have missed out on medals in their individual events at the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Championship for Shotgun in Moscow, but today they captured a bronze medal in the World Championship debut of the Trap Mixed Team event.
The ultra-competitive couple joked that they were going to get redemption on the Finals field at the Foxlodge Shooting Range and they did just that today, hitting 41/50 targets to beat an Australian team of 2016 Olympic gold medalist Catherine Skinner and World Championship Junior silver medalist Jack Wallace (38 hits) to win the inaugural World Championship bronze-medal match. The Trap Mixed Team event will make its debut as an Olympic event in Tokyo in 2020.
"[Carroll] carried me in the Final, but I helped her out in the Qualification so we worked well together," Haldeman said. The couple – who are dating and have known each other for years – have coincidentally shot the same scores in every competition throughout the past year in the first 75 targets (women only shoot 75 targets in Qualification and men shoot 125). They even had the same score at this World Championship over the first 75 targets in their individual Qualifications (72 hits). "But she didn't shoot any of the rest of the Qualification for the men where I got a 49 so I'm ahead already!" Haldeman joked.
"He beat me today and held it together so it got us into the Final together," Carroll conceded. In the Trap Mixed Team event, teams of two athletes shoot two rounds of 25 targets each. The individual scores over the two rounds were added together to get the team's Qualification score.
"In Qualification, [Carroll] struggled a bit in one round and I just told her it's a team event - if one person is struggling, the other person picks it up," Haldeman said. "I did it in Qualification and she definitely did it in the Final."
Carroll (Solvang, California) won her first World Championship medal this weekend when she, Caitlin Weinheimer (Port Lavaca, Texas) and Corey Cogdell-Unrein (Eagle River, Alaska) won Women's Trap Team gold. She finished in sixth place individually in the event. This Trap Mixed Team bronze medal is Haldeman's (U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit/Sunbury, Ohio) first World Championship medal. In his first World Championship as a Men's Trap competitor, the former Double Trap specialist finished in fifth place.
Also competing in the Mixed Trap Team event were Weinheimer and Jake Wallace (Castaic, California) who finished in 34th place.
View complete scores from the Trap Mixed Team event: http://www.issf-sports.org/media/resultspdf/2017/1911/K200000TA0409171630.1.TRMIX.0.001.pdf.
The U.S. team will resume competition Thursday with the first day of Qualification for Men's and Women's Skeet. Read the Women's Skeet preview here: http://www.usashooting.org/news/2017/9/4/976-world-champs-preview-talented-womens-skeet-squad-ready-for-russia. The Men's Skeet preview will be released later this week.
640 athletes from 76 countries are competing at this World Championship at the Foxlodge Shooting Range in the Moscow Region through Sunday evening. For more information, visit the World Championship website: http://www.wch2017russia.org/en/ and follow along with results on the ISSF website: http://www.issf-sports.org/competitions/venue.ashx?cshipid=1911.
Download photos from today's action: https://www.flickr.com/gp/usashooting/67P5kf.
Winchester Ammunition is a Proud Sponsor of the USA Shooting Shotgun Team: Winchester Ammunition has been the exclusive ammunition sponsor and supplier of the USA Shooting Shotgun Team since 1999. Members of the past three shotgun teams brought home a combined eight medals from Rio de Janeiro, London and Beijing using Winchester AA International Target loads. Winchester is an industry leader in advancing and supporting conservation, hunter education and our country's proud shooting sports heritage. For more information about Winchester and its complete line of products, visit winchester.com.
About USA Shooting:
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Contact:
Jessica Delos Reyes
jessica.delosreyes@usashooting.org
USA Shooting
