Fun fact: At the 2016 Olympics in Rio, the first 2 medals for Team USA came from the shooting sports. The very first gold medal of the 2016 Olympics went to an American in the women’s air rifle event, and on day 2, the US men’s archery team took silver. The men’s archery team were favorites, and they lived up to their reputation of excellence established by their silver medal performance at the 2012 Olympics in London. It was in Ginny Thrasher, a 19-year old at her first Olympics, who made a big splash. In her Olympic debut, Ginny beat out a well-qualified, experienced field of shooters, and she proved she is a force to be reckoned with.
Leading up to her gold medal performance in Rio, Ginny won just about every competition the US could offer her. She won both the air rifle and smallbore rifle NCAA championships in March, and as the first freshman ever to win both rifle titles, she led the West Virginia University Rifle team to a 4th straight team title. In April, she clinched her spot at the Olympic trials. In June, she won the USA Shooting national championship. By August, she was golden.
Ginny Thrasher’s performance on the rifle range is nothing short of extraordinary. But she’s more than just a girl with a gun (granted, a girl who is really good with a gun). She is a stellar student and an aspiring biomedical engineer, and above all she is an excellent role model. Ginny Thrasher is just what the shooting community needs, and here’s why.
1. She is making the shooting sports nationally visible.
Her Olympic gold brought her onto the national stage last August, and Ginny is once again in the limelight as a finalist for the prestigious AAU James E. Sullivan Award. The Amateur Athletics Union held a voting-based contest to whittle down the top 7 amateur athletes of the past year, and announced Ginny among the finalists for the award, which will be presented on April 11. Past recipients of the Sullivan Award include Michael Phelps and Peyton Manning. Several other Olympic gold medalists are among the finalists this year, including 2 members of the “Final Five” Olympic gold medal winning gymnastics team.
This is a tough crowd for Ginny to beat. But, so were her competitors at the Rio Olympics, and look what she did there. The real victory is in the fact that a rifle-toting athlete was nominated and made it to the final round of voting. What does Ginny have to say about her nomination? “I am very excited about the opportunity this represents for me and for the shooting sports.” Amen, sister.
2. She has a “halo effect” – and not just because of her blonde locks.
The air rifle range where Ginny and fellow Olympian Lucas Kozeniesky learned to shoot recently upgraded its target system to accommodate the explosion of new shooters following Ginny’s 2016 Rio gold medal performance. Ginny’s father, Roger Thrasher, is the director of the facility and he calls the unprecedented growth in interest in air rifle “The Ginny Halo Effect.” In her own words, “It’s pretty cool the growth they’ve had.”
Later in April, Ginny and a teammate will hop on a plane to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs for the National Junior Olympic Shooting Championships (NJOSC). The NJOSC is set up to pit the best rifle and pistol athletes…
