5 Arkansas teens named to Junior Olympic Shotgun Team
This article was published February 3, 2011 at 2:27 p.m.
Five of the 10 members on the 2011 Junior Olympic Shotgun Team are from Arkansas.
Those five also are current or recent members of teams that compete in the Arkansas Youth Shooting Sports Program, created and managed by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. The announcement came in late January from USA Shooting, the governing body of Olympic shooting events.
"This is a great honor for student athletes involved in the sport of trap shooting, and is the first stage on the road to achieving an Olympic dream," said Chuck Woodson, AYSSP coordinator.
The five Arkansans are Haley Colbert of Texarkana, Hunter Gallant of Cord, Josh Hall of Mount Ida, Austin Odom of Benton and Wesley Wilcox of Greenbrier.
Colbert, 16, is a junior who's very active in campus life at Arkansas High School in Texarkana. She had never held a gun until three years ago when she joined the Razorback Trap Team after her father persauded her to give shooting a try. She recently was No. 19 in women's trap shooting in the USA Shooting rankings.
Gallant, a 2010 graduate of Batesville High School, attends University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville. He enjoys hunting, fishing, basketball and, of course, shooting.
Hall, 15, has been shooting for two years and is a member of the Mount Ida High School Trap Team. Hall's an A student who plays football, basketball and baseball, and pole vaults.
Odom, a 15-year-old sophomore at Benton High School, began shooting competitively in the AYSSP, 4-H and Scholastic Clay Target Program in 2007. He is a 2010 and 2011 member of the Junior Olympic Bunker Trap Team. Odom has many first-place finishes in his shooting career, including 4-H, AYSSP and Junior Olympic events.
Wilcox, a freshman at Arkansas Tech University, has placed highly in several state and national tournaments. He won gold medals at the 2009 and 2010 Arkansas Junior Olympic State Qualifier, a silver medal at the Olympic Development Camp in Colorado Springs and finished eighth in the men's open in the 2010 USA Shooting Fall Selection Match.
Information for this article was contributed by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
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