Casia Steinhaus and Travis Jorgenson, two Devils Lake, North Dakota natives, traveled to compete in these matches held at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, CO, over December 12, 13 & 14. These Air Rifle and Air Pistol Championship matches consist of 60 shots for score each day over two days. Casia competed in the air rifle matches and Travis in the air pistol matches.

Travis has not competed at the Olympic Training Center since he was a junior air pistol competitor over 25 years ago. This was quite a commitment for him, with travel and missing work without pay. Casia is a student at UND and missed classes. She had a typical interrupted airplane trip to barely make it to the range for practice on a later relay. Travis’ trip included an extra day off work so that he could start the trip before poor weather set in. You have to really enjoy the competitive shooting sports to make these sacrifices.

Travis began the first day neck and neck with Nick Mawrer finishing second as Nick put on a spectacular finish with a 99 in his last 10 shots. Nick in first place and Travis in second.

Casia fired a good match with no shots outside the 9 ring, but not as many inner tens as she is accustomed to shooting. She finished 37th in Women’s Air Rifle. If she had been competing in Men’s Air Rifle, she would have finished 6th. That is how strong the women are in Air Rifle.

Travis got off to a good start on Day 2 with a 96 for his first 10 shots but fell a little short of Day 1 with a total of 560-10x. Added to his Day 1 score of 565-15x, this gave him an aggregate of 1125-25x good for 4th place overall. Nick Mowrer shot another fine match score of 576-24x to lead the Day 2 Men’s Air Pistol results and the aggregate with an 1148-40x.

The top 8 shot a Finals match on Sunday to figure out the overall match placement.

Casia started Day 2 with a 10.9 for her first shot, and she continued to shoot very well ending with a 618.9. That is an average of a bit over 10.3 for each shot and an integer score of 590. In the Men’s Air Rifle, her 2-day aggregate of 1232.7 would have placed 4th while in the Women’s she ended up in 40th. It is amazing how well the women dominate in average high score compared to the men.

On that note, Katie Zaun of Buffalo, ND, a student at Texas Christian University, fired an aggregate of 1261.1 over the two days to finish first. She then followed with a first place in the Finals match by .1 point to earn first place. Of the 136 women who competed, Katie is USA Shooting’s 2025 Winter Airgun Women’s Champion.

The overall results are available at USA Shooting’s website: https://usashooting.org/get-involved/events/

North Dakota is a small state with a small pool of competitive shooters, but these few certainly stand out on the national stage.

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