Corey Cogdell-Unrein punched her ticket for a third Olympic Games, claiming the roster spot for women’s trap as the U.S. Olympic Trials for Shotgun concluded Wednesday at the Delta Shooting Complex in Tillar, Arkansas.
Trailing Janessa Beaman after the first stage of the Olympic Trials last October in Tucson, Arizona, Cogdell-Unrein, 29, used the Arkansas stage to re-establish herself as the nation’s leading women’s trap shooter. Bronze medalist at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, she placed 11th in London in 2012.
She began shooting in her local 4-H program, where she started her trap shooting development. An unquenchable desire to improve led her to seek tips from athletes at each competition she attended. That unwavering drive was rewarded in 2006 when she earned a spot on the national team at the fall selection camp. She validated that selection by winning bronze at her first international competition, the 2007 world cup in Changwon, China. Since then she has a compiled a total of six world cup medals, including golds won in Tucson in 2012 and Acapulco, Mexico, in 2015.
The ticket to Rio will take her to a place where she has already enjoyed success. She won bronze at the Rio 2007 Pan American Games, then three years later struck gold at the 2010 Championship of the Americas, also held in Rio.
A native of Eagle River, Alaska, Cogdell-Unrein is married to NFL defensive end Mitch Unrein, who currently plays for the Chicago Bears after stints with the Houston Texans, Denver Broncos and San Diego Chargers.
Cogdell-Unrein rounds out an impressive array of shooters who comprise the U.S. Olympic Shotgun Team for Rio. They include Frank Thompson and two-time Olympic champion Vincent Hancock in men’s skeet; reigning world champion Morgan Craft and five-time Olympic medalist Kim Rhode in women’s skeet; and double trap shooters Glenn Eller, the 2008 Olympic champion, and Josh Richmond. The seven-member team owns a collective nine Olympic medals heading into Rio.
