16-Year-Old Girl Dominates National Junior Olympics

Elizabeth Marsh — remember the name. This girl’s got game, as the 16-year-old Arkansas native proved at the 2015 National Junior Olympic Championships (NJOSC). In a superb performance, young Elizbeth won BOTH the Air Rifle and Smallbore Events in the Ladies’ Division at NJOSC. Remarkably, her finals score beat the current Junior World Record.

Elizabeth first claimed top honors in Air Rifle, then she won the Smallbore event with a dominating performance. She shot a world-class Smallbore Final, besting her nearest opponent by 12.1 points. In fact, her Finals score of 459.3 is 3.5 points better than the current Junior World Record (455.8) set by China’s Ruijiao Pei at last year’s World Championship.

Her latest mentor, three-time Olympic medalist Matt Emmons, explained why Elizabeth has achieved so much success at a very young age:

“She has a ton of things going for her. First, she likes to shoot and wants to go far with it. Her approach is great. She has an excellent outlook of wanting to do very well, but not to the point of wanting it too much that she gets in her own way. She’s a good sportswoman… happy to shake someone else’s hand when they do well. On top of that, she’s not afraid to work. She trains hard and she trains smart. All of the above things set her apart from the average shooter her age. It’s almost like the perfect storm. As far as the future, that’s totally up to her.”