Kayle Browning looks on during a competition.
Derrick Mein, who grew up on a farm in Kansas, and 2012 U.S. Olympic Team alternate Kayle Browning are the leaders in trap shooting after the opening stage of the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for shotgun.
Mein, a 13-time state champion in Kansas, finished off the men’s competition with a four-day score of 243 on Friday at Hill Country Shooting Sports Center in Kerrville, Texas. He is seven targets ahead of Brian Burrows. In third place was Alex Rennert with a score of 232.
Burrows was coming off a first-place finish in the Pan American Games, where he also clinched a U.S. quota spot for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. After having not sent men’s trap shooter to the Olympic Games since 2008, the U.S. has secured two spots for Tokyo.
Browning, who clinched an Olympic quota spot with a win in the 2018 Championship of the Americas, finished first in the women’s competition with a score of 232.
Ashley Carroll, who in July became the first U.S. woman to win a trap world title in 20 years and also clinched an Olympic quota spot with a third-place finish in a world cup tournament, was second with a score of 230. She moved up two spots in Friday’s competition.
Rachel Tozier was third, five targets back of Carroll.
The Olympic trials consist of two stages of competition, followed by a super final among the top six shooters in each discipline. The second stage begins Feb. 25 in Tucson, Arizona.
The opening stage for skeet begins Wednesday in Kerrville.
Paul D. Bowker has been writing about Olympic sports since 1996, when he was an assistant bureau chief in Atlanta. He is a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
