May 16 - June 5, 2017 • Vol. 2, No. 8
Every Issue Complimentary Every Time
Shotgun spells success for local woman Ashley Carroll travels the world to compete in trap shooting
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SYV coalition says Camp 4 impacts larger than they seem by Raiza Giorgi
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by Raiza Giorgi
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shley Carroll does everything she can keep her concentration between rounds by wearing dark glasses and listening to music as she pushes through each trap-shooting match. Her process is definitely working, because the 22-year-old from Solvang won her first World Cup gold medal in Acapulco on March 19. “I keep my pre-shooting routine going and I’ve met with sports psychologists to help me with my mental focus and staying calm. It can be hard when you have people talking to you between matches, and I really try to pick a song and focus on it,” Carroll said. Carroll has been trap shooting since she was in second grade. It was an activity that she and her father, Charlie Carroll, did together. He is now the coach for the Santa Ynez Valley Sportsman Association’s Scholastic Clay Target Program, in which hundreds of kids from all around the Central Coast participate. “He wouldn’t let me shoot until I could hold the gun up on my own for a good amount of time. We would set up boxes in the living room and I would practice for hours until I was ready,” Carroll said. She she believes that more kids should take lessons and learn their way around a gun. “Guns actually kept me out of trouble, because every Friday night and most weekends my dad and I were at the trap range practicing
Photo contributed Solvang native Ashley Carroll credits her father, Charlie Carroll, with instilling in her the love of shooting clays and a sense of responsibility and safety around firearms.
or participating in league events. My friends would want me to go to a party with them and I knew if I did I wouldn’t get enough rest or get in trouble and not be allowed to shoot,” Carroll said. Trap shooting has also allowed her to participate in a sport and travel all around the world for competitions. Recently she went to Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic east of Turkey. “It was a beautiful country and one of the cleanest places I’ve been to. The streets were impeccable and the people were beyond hospitable,” she said. Carroll also won bronze in the HH Sheikha Fatia Bint Mubarak Women’s International Shooting Championship in the United Arab Emirates on April 13. Since graduating from Santa Ynez Valley
Union High School Carroll has been attending the University of Colorado and working on her general education. She believes this will be a big year for her shooting. She moved to Colorado Springs to be close to the Olympic Training Center, which is also the headquarters for USA Shooting. She placed second for the 2016 Olympic team trials and is still deciding if she wants to go for the next Olympic tryouts. “A highlight for me was meeting Kim Rhode, who has been an inspiration to women in shooting. After talking to her it became really clear to me that I can achieve this as well,” Carroll said. Rhode became the first athlete to win an individual medal during six consecutive sum-
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El Rancho Market The Heart of the Santa Ynez Valley 2886 Mission Drive • Solvang • 805-688-4300 elranchomarket.com
ore than 100 people turned out for a recent community meeting organized by a group opposed to the “Camp 4” property in Santa Ynez becoming part of the Chumash reservation. Members of the Santa Ynez Valley Coalition, which was created to defeat legislation that would take the rural land “into trust” for the tribe, focused on land use and preserving the valley’s rural character. At the meeting on April 27 at the Solvang Veteran’s Memorial Hall, coalition members recounted the history of land-use master plans called the Valley Blueprint and the Valley Plan and said they would release more information in the coming weeks, organizers said. The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians announced in January that the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) had placed the tribe’s 1,390 acres known as “Camp 4” into federal trust. “Camp 4 is officially part of our reservation so we can begin the process of building homes on the property for tribal members and their families and revitalizing our tribal community,” Tribal Chairman Kenneth Kahn said in a prepared statement that was part of that announcement. The tribe bought the Camp 4 property in 2010 from late actor, vintner and hotelier Fess Parker, and they soon began the process of placing the land into federal trust, which makes it part of the tribe’s sovereign nation. Those efforts have been loudly opposed
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