Hot off the plane from Germany on Sunday night, Lakes Entrance shooting sisters, Aislin and Renae Jones, are cooling off in their wintery hometown after a successful trip to Europe.
Both competed at the ISSF Junior World Cup in Suhl, Germany, over the past week. Just weeks earlier they were in Italy for the World Championships where Aislin achieved a top 10 world championship finish for the third time in her short career.
While it was Aislin’s fifth trip to Suhl for an ISSF Junior World Cup, it was Renae’s debut trip with a Shooting Australia national team.
Straight from their competition at the ISSF World Championships in Italy, both girls excelled in their chosen disciplines achieving top 10 finishes.
Aislin shot the Olympic Skeet event as Australia’s only entry in skeet, while Renae shot the Olympic Trap event making up a three-woman team with Kiara Dean, of Echuca Clay Target Club, and Alexis Preston, from Werribee Victorian Clay Target Club.
Aislin, who is now 19 and in her penultimate year in international junior competition, shot consistently during the two days of competition in a very tough field.
The first day saw three rounds of 25 targets contested with Aislin shooting 22, 24, 21. Day two’s 22 and 23 totalled for a 112/125, tied with 2018 European Junior champion, Giada Longhi, of Italy. Unfortunately for both Aislin and the Italian, 112 was two targets short of the qualification score that was needed to make the top six and progress to the final.
The USA team of Austen Smith, Katie Jacobs and Samantha Simonton, who edged Aislin out of the medals at the 2017 World Championships in Moscow, proved too strong for the international field of the world’s best junior women.
Over 125 targets, shooting in the same squad as Aislin, Smith shot a total of 123/125 and equaled the open women’s world record set by teammate Simonton in Acapulco in March.
Simonton 114/125 and Jacobs (119/125) also shot well and the team of three gave the USA the women’s skeet teams medal and set a new junior and open women’s skeet teams world record of 356/375.
The three Americans shot a tight final to finish with individual gold, silver and bronze medals and gave the USA a clean sweep of the podium.
Smith took the gold medal after a shoot off as a result of tying for gold on 53/60. Jacobs ended up with the bronze.
In the ISSF Women’s trap Renae was competing in only her second international event for her career, both in this current trip.
After a respectable international debut finishing the World Championships in Italy less than a fortnight earlier in 27th on 96/125, Renae took what she had learned both in experience and from assistant national coach and Olympic medalist, Deserie Barnes, and shot a 107/125 to place 10th in almost the same field of junior women who she’d met in competition in Italy.
The scores at this event being marginally higher than the world championships, the score put Renae two targets off the final six and tied with Carey Garrison of the USA. Ties are decided by count back of qualification rounds and Garrison had a stronger finish so took ninth.
Alexis Preston’s 109/125 saw her shoot off for the sixth finals berth but was unsuccessful.
Combined with Kiara Dean’s 101/125 the three young Australians tied with the Italian team on 317 targets.
The teams event ties are also decided on countback and it was only the Italian’s higher score in the last round that unluckily edged the Australian girls off the bronze medal step of the podium.
Renae will return to local DTL trap competition and domestic competition in Olympic Trap for the remainder of the year in the lead up to the National Championships in January.
Aislin has three weeks at home before heading to the United Kingdom for training and Finland for a world cup as she continues in her quest for a qualifying place for Tokyo 2020.
Both will hope to qualify for the team returning to Suhl in 2020 where the prestige of this event will be elevated to the Junior World Championships.
PICTURED: Aislin Jones, grandmother, Mary Jones, and Renae Jones, competed at the ISSF Junior World Cup, in Suhl, Germany, last week. (PS)
