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She honed her skills while forging new friendships through rifle shooting. The more she shot, the better she got. Her academic and shooting worlds merged when she enrolled at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Maddalena redshirted his first year and went on to win eight All-American titles with the Nanooks.
In 2014, Fairbanks coach Dan Jordan encouraged Maddalena to try out for the world championship team, which she did. Maddalena qualified for the team and she got her first taste of what it means to compete at the highest level.
“He saw potential in me that I didn’t realize,” Maddalena said of his college coach. “2014 was huge. I had just started shooting air rifle a year and a half before that. I started shooting air rifle in college because I wanted to compete, so that was my first big competition. ”
Competing in the World Championships catapulted her into a new stratosphere. When she was in college, all she did was sleep, shoot, go to class, eat, shoot again, sleep again, and start all over again.
Maddalena said shooting at the collegiate level was the first big step in his career in knowing he could be good or even great.
“Part way through college, I thought I might be able to compete with the best players in the country, but I wouldn’t be able to compete with the best players in the world,” she said. “About six months before the Tokyo Games, I knew I was competitive and that if I could hit shots with these guys, I could win.”
Her finish at the Tokyo Games, which fell just short of the medal podium, fueled her desire to work even harder. Now at Georgia State Shooting Squad, she splits her time evenly between shooting and other things like mental and physical training.
Maddalena won gold in air rifle at the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, but said her victory does not necessarily bode well for the next Olympics.
“It was a great competition and the crowd was great, but we had some great shooters so we were lucky to make it to the final,” she said.
“The Olympics are more finely tuned as a sport. One game a day, and only a few people per country go there,” she said. “It’s also unique in the sense that we have all the other sports. They’re the best people in their respective sports. It’s pretty spectacular to walk in front of them.”
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