“Who got me started” in shooting can really be divided between two people: my best friend, and my dad.

When I was 8 years old Liz and I were inseparable. We were in the same class, played on the same softball team, and spent a lot of time walking places with our arms linked. So when her older brother joined a 4-H shooting club and her dad made her go along, I willingly joined so she wouldn’t have to be the only girl. We started out in a storage shed that had no A/C and limited heat during the Nebraska winters. I also started with minimal coaching, so no one realized I was left eye dominant (because I wrote right handed) and I spent a year seeing two targets and guessing which one to shoot at. I was terrible, always missing the target, but for some reason I loved it.

Which is where I have to give my dad most of the credit. Liz might have dragged me to the actual building, but my dad made me love shooting. He was, and always has been, the pivotal person in my shooting career that made overcoming a challenge something I wanted to do. He took the initiative to take coaching classes and helped me learn to shoot left handed. Together we learned all the basics and later the advanced aspects of rifle shooting. Practice was a chance for him and me to sit down together in our own bubble and work out a problem (mostly shooting, but sometimes not). I got better, won some matches, and for the next 10 years my dad and I worked towards goals that later got me a college scholarship.