Saturday, April 20, 2024
Makenzie Sheffield’s high school air rifle career ended Saturday at the American Legion Junior 3-Position air Rifle Championship in Colorado Springs.
And, as she has so many times, Sheffield ended up on top.
The 2019 Granbury alum fired a 2,476.2 to beat Scott Rockett of Cary, North Carolina, by 2.2 points and claim the precision title. Rockett, a friend of Sheffield’s, had a one-point lead going into the final round.
“I knew going into finals it was going to be closem,” Sheffield said. “I knew I had to keep the mentality of one shot at a time.
“It’s the last 3x20 air match I’m ever going to shoot,” she thought.”I gave it my all.”
FINISH THE THOUGHT
That mantra of taking one shot at a time is a common refrain among Granbury High School Marine Corps JROTC shooters. It’s what’s helped Sheffield and teammates like Philip Becker win countless individual and team matches and break national records over the last few years.
But going into Saturday’s final round, Sheffield had to know where she was in the standings, and had to make sure she didn’t focus on the leaderboad instead of her next shot.
“I definitely did think about it,” she said. “For me, it takes a while to learn how to get over your mental anxiety type thing.
“But this past year I really honed in on, ‘I have the skills, I just need to make sure I focus on my mental training.’ I had that thought creep in a few times, but once I got in position, and we started finals, I knew I couldn’t let that affect me.”
Lt. Col Scott Casey, Sheffield’s coach at Granbury, said he and Sheffield knew it would be a tight match.
“At the caliber that she’s at, it’s going to come down to finals,” he said. “She was mentally prepared for it... she’s used to high pressure. It may be coming second nature now.”
She leaned on advice she received from U.S. Olympian Lucas Kozeniesky, who Sheffield has trained with. Kozeniesky is a North Carolina State University alum, and Sheffield will shoot for the Wolfpack next year.
“If you have one of those thoughts, finish it,” Sheffield said Kozeniesky told her. “If you don’t, your mind can’t process that many things all at once. Finish your thought, go on with it.”
So she did, shooting a round-high score of 103.2 against Rockett’s 100.4 to win the championship and a $5,000 scholarship from the American Legion.
‘BITTERSWEET’ END
Sheffield was well aware that this was her last match as a member of the Granbury JROTC.
“It’s my last everything for high school,” she said. “All this work in high school paid off. That match showed it.”
She said the finality of it all hasn’t yet sunk in.
“When I started out shooting, I was shooting by myself. I wasn’t on a team,” she said. “So my sophomore year, when I moved to Granbury, when I started shooting with the GHS rifle team, I definitely knew there was something different.”
Sheffield said competitors from other schools would joke that there was “something in the water” in Gran-bury that gave GHS shooters an extra edge.
“It’s a different mentality, a different atmosphere.”
Casey said Sheffield will leave behind a definitive legacy at Granbury.
“She’s one of the most successful kids that we’ve had in the program,” Casey said. “She leaves a legacy of national records. The bar is very high for the kiddos coming in.”
Her mom, Stephanie, was able to be there in Colorado Springs, and Sheffield said she has a picture of her and her mom “hugging it out” after her win.
“You realize you have a lot of people behind you,” Sheffield said, which made the win all the more sweeter.
Now she has her eyes set on college competitions, which she knows will be tougher.
“Going to college is a different level of competition,” she said. “It’s definitely harder, there’s a lot higher standards.”
While her ultimate goal is to make the Olympic squad, Sheffield said she’s proud of the goals she achieved in high school.
“I knew I wanted to be somewhere, and one of my goals was to make Granbury known, and to reach college and shoot on a team,” she said.
“It’s cool to see where I ended up.”
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