Summer Olympic shooting event will be Friday for former JSU standout

Jul. 22—Former Jacksonville State rifle competitor James Hall's event in the Summer Olympics will be Friday.

He made the United States team in the 10-meter air pistol, and that will take place Friday at 6:30 p.m.-2:30 a.m. The Olympics will be broadcast on NBC, NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app.

Hall is the second Gamecock to compete in the Olympics after golfer Danny Willett competed for his native UK in 2016's Rio Games.

Hall was a member of the JSU Rifle Team from 2003-2006, leading the Gamecocks to a NCAA smallbore national championship. He received elite honors as an NRA All-American all four years and was named the Conference Smallbore and Air Rifle Most Valuable Player in 2005 and 2006.

Hall's first achievement on his way to earning an Olympic spot was when he won the first quota spot for Team USA after winning gold at the Championship of the Americas in November 2018 in Guadalajara, Mexico. He will be joined by Nick Mowrer of Phoenix, Ariz., as the two members of the Team USA pistol squad.

With the postponement of the 2020 Olympics, USA Shooting announced that people that have already qualified during the trials will be the members of the team in Tokyo in 2021. The second part of the trials concluded in early March after the first section of the trials, which was completed in December. Hall finished second with 2,295 in the trials held at Fort Benning, Ga.

After a successful NCAA rifle career, Hall coached at JSU as a graduate assistant and a volunteer before picking up pistol shooting as an athlete. He made his first attempt at the Olympic team in 2012 and again in 2016, barely missing his spot on the 2016 Rio Olympic Team.