Silver bullets
N.L. shooters feeling at home on the podium
Margaret Coady and Emily Keeping of St. John’s won silver medals in the women's 10-metre air pistol team event Tuesday at the Canada Winter Games in Prince George, B.C. It was the third medal performance for the province at the Games, all by shooters.
Team Newfoundland and Labrador target shooters put the province back on the medal podium again Tuesday at the Canada Winter Games in Prince George, B.C.
St. John’s natives Maggie Coady, 16, and Emily Keeping, 15, won silver in the women’s 10-metre air pistol team event at New Caledonia College.
“We came in not really knowing what we were up against,” says Coady, at a loss for words following the medal win.
“It’s the Canada Games, It’s a huge deal. We’re over the moon.”
Their success comes on the heels of a pair of medals collected in the team air rifle event on Monday when Samantha Marsh and Hayley Barrett claimed gold in the women’s team event Daniel Dimitrov and William Dalton’s silver in the men’s.
Keeping says they felt some pressure following their teammates’ opening day success.
“But we trusted our training and knew if we came in and did our best, no matter what the results were, we would be happy.”
Head coach Dave Woolridge says Monday’s results — Team NL’s first gold medal at a Winter Games since 1999 in Corner Brook — were a confidence boost for the team as a whole, but also something of a doubleedged sword.
“It was good and it was building people up, but it was also building up nerves.
“Once we got our nerves under control and followed our routine, we were able to put on the blinders and see where we wanted to go.”
Woolridge went on to sug- gest the mental training available through the province’s High Performance Program through John Rowe has proved invaluable to the team’s overall success thus far.
“Being in the here and now is all that counts,” the coach says. “You cannot think about the previous shot, you cannot think about the next shot. It’s probably the hardest element to master in our sport.”
Coady and Keeping say the lessons learned from Rowe helped them stay focused on getting the most out of their performance.
“It helped put me in the right mental state and understand how to take these pressures on and turn them into things that can be useful,” says Keeping.
Added Coady,” Especially if you start to lose focus and start to get stressed out.
“There’s lot of things he taught us about muscle relaxation, taking a second to calm down and getting focused and back on your game.”
The silver medal provides a shot of extra confidence for the girls as they prepare to compete in the individual event on Thursday, but Woolridge says the self-assurance could be infectious for other Team NL athletes at these Games.
“You can see it in biathlon and with a few of the other athletes we’ve encountered.
“They’re looking optimistic and hopeful for success as well because they’ve seen it done.”