Alana Townsend can, without exaggerating, say she’s one of the best air pistol shooters in the world. Not a lot of 17-year-old girls can make that claim.
From Georgia to the Czech Republic, Townsend has repeatedly proven this summer that she is among the most accurate junior shooters anywhere. And with one more year left at Glacier High School, Townsend has her sights, quite literally, set on a college scholarship and the national Olympic shooting team – “the actual Olympic team,” she says.
Townsend has to specify since she has already made both the Junior Olympic shooting developmental team and the Junior Olympic traveling international team.
In Timber Stevens’ 11 years of coaching at Flathead County 4-H Shooting Sports, a respected youth program with dozens of students each year, he hasn’t seen any kid rise to such global notoriety within the sport.
“She deserves what she’s earned,” Stevens said. “She works hard at it, she’s very focused and she’s learned the technique really well. When she toes up to the line, her concentration is excellent.”
“The ones who get to be really good at it,” he added, “become like a machine.”
At the Junior Olympic international shooting championships in Plzen, Czech Republic in late June, Townsend scored a personal-best 373 out of 400 in the single-shot air pistol competition, which is her area of expertise. Her score was based on 40 shots at a distance of 10 meters. She placed 11th in the world out of 56 qualifying shooters under the age of 21 from 28 countries.
Townsend was one of five shooters on the national 10-meter women’s team to make the trip to Czech. At 17, Townsend said she was one of the younger competitors. Kylie Gagnon of Bozeman gave the U.S. team two Montanans.
“It was a great experience,” Townsend said of her trip. “It was my first time in Europe.”
Two weeks later on July 3-6, Townsend traveled to Fort Benning, Ga., to compete in the USA Shooting national championships against more than 60 junior and adult women from the U.S., Virgin Islands and Mexico. She shot a 364 and then 371 to qualify for the finals in both the junior (under 21) and open (over 21) divisions.
Townsend won the gold medal in the 15-17 age group and placed second overall among juniors behind teammate Gagnon of Bozeman. Townsend is now the seventh-ranked woman in the nation, counting all ages. She has also won the gold medal the last two years as the top shooter in Montana in all divisions, boys and girls under 18.
Townsend started shooting air rifle with the Flathead County 4-H Shooting Sports program when she was 9 years old but “got bored with it.” She has found her niche with the air pistol and she hopes it scores her a scholarship to the shooting program at Ohio State University – then maybe the Olympics.
“I’m passionate about it,” Townsend said.