Sarasota Shooter Wins Silver Medal At Tokyo Olympics

TOKYO, JAPAN — Sarasota shooter Mary Carolynn Tucker won a silver medal as part of Team USA’s mixed 10-meter air rifle team at the Tokyo Summer Olympics Tuesday.

Tucker, 20, and her partner, Lucas Kozeniesky, pulled through the event’s first qualification round in the No. 7 spot, according to the Olympics website. Only the top eight of the 29 teams competing moved forward in that round.

By the second qualification round, the pair took the No. 2 spot, behind a team of Chinese shooters, to move into gold medal match.

In that final round, they went up against Qian Yang and Haoran Yang of China, losing 17 to 13, and earning the silver medal. A team of Russian shooters, competing under the Russian Olympic Committee, took the bronze medal.

In solo shooting events, Tucker came in sixth place in the women’s 10-meter air rifle competition July 22. She’ll compete in the women’s 50-meter rifle three positions shooting event Thursday.

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She got her start shooting at the Sarasota Military Academy when she was 16 years old because her mother told her she had to play a sport, the Observer reported.

"I was bad," Tucker said. "Like, really bad. I could not figure out the positions. I'm small, so it was difficult to hold and control my gun sometimes."

She didn’t take the sport seriously, at first, and focused more on friendships and staying active at her school. She was annoyed when told she wouldn’t go far in the sport, though, and quit the SMA team.

Tucker decided to train herself using YouTube tutorials and practicing in her home garage, the Observer said. She went on to shoot for the University of Kentucky’s rifle team.

She’s also an accomplished equestrian who has participated in jumping competitions at the state level in Florida, according to her Olympics profile.