Team alumnus and rising NC State Wolfpack senior adds another title to his already impressive resume: Olympian.
Lucas Kozeniesky went to the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Airgun, June 3-5, 2016 in Camp Perry, Ohio, charting the top score in the event on Friday and Saturday before turning in another strong performance Sunday to secure a spot on the 2016 Olympic Team.
This final part of the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Airgun consisted of three straight days of Qualification, as well as three separate Finals. Each day’s qualifying scores and points from the event Finals were added to each competitor’s score to get a cumulative total.
Mathematically, he had one of the two Men’s Air Rifle slots locked down prior to the last day’s Final with dominating, world-class Qualification scores each of the three days of competition. His 20 points in the finals sessions were the most by any shooter in the competition.
Lucas finished the competition with a cumulative total of 1902.4, clinching the top spot by more than 18 points (1883.8). He fired scores of 634.5 Friday, 633.5 Saturday and ended strong Sunday at 634.4.
“My confidence level was really high heading into the weekend and I trusted my training, which allowed me to be successful.” He chalks this accomplishment up to his focus on mental management in the weeks leading up to the Trials.
“This is probably the first match where all of my training came together at one point – everything was calculated, everything went well, everything was on call, I knew exactly what was going on the entire time and it was just a really good match,” he said. “That was the goal – I just wanted to have a really good performance and the reality of what was happening didn’t really hit me until 10 shots away from the finish where it was like ‘Oh my God!’ This was probably my best match ever!”
The 2016 Summer Olympics will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 5 through 21. The dates on which he and his team will compete have not yet been made available.
Info courtesy of NCState and USAShooting. Pictures courtesy of USA Shooting.