ARLINGTON – McKenna Dahl, a Lakewood High School graduate, made history when she became the first woman to win a Paralympic medal in Shooting for the United States.

She won bronze in the R5 (Mixed 10m Air Rifle Prone SH2) event at the Centro Nacional de Tiro Esportivo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Dahl, the youngest at age 20 and the only woman in the field of the eight finalists, qualified for the finals in third place with a score of 635.4.

In the finals, the top-eight shooters start at zero, and Dahl lead early.

When it came to the elimination shot for the bronze-medal position (the 18th shot of the match), Dahl was in second place and shot a 10.3. The then third-place athlete – Geunsoo Kim of South Korea – shot a 10.8 to move ahead of Dahl.

“It’s overwhelming!” Dahl said. “I knew about halfway thought the final that I was in contention for a medal, and I was probably going to succeed in doing so. A lot of it was really just shot process and breathing, keeping everything together and doing what I needed to do.”

During her pre-event training, Dahl noted some issues with her rifle’s sights and did a complete replacement in the middle of the hourlong training session.

“I had some issues with my sights sticking early on and about halfway through the PET, they started sticking again so Armando (Ayala, Paralympic assistant coach] had brought a new sight, and we changed it out. I named it ‘Aaron’ to get to know it better and become comfortable with it so I had a date with Aaron today, and it went pretty well!” she laughed.

Dahl’s medal win marks the first U.S. Paralympic Games medal in Shooting since 2004. Roger Withrow – the only U.S. Paralympic Games gold medal winner in Shooting – took first in the Air Rifle Prone event in 1984.