A month that began with a world record ended with a silver medal at the national championships for Eagle River trapshooter Corey Cogdell.
Cogdell, the bronze medalist at the 2008 Summer Olympics, captured runner-up honors at the USA Shooting national championships Sunday in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Cogdell, 26, added the silver medal from the national meet to a bronze medal she collected July 5 at a World Cup competition in Granada, Spain, bringing her career haul to four on the World Cup stage, four at the national championships, plus the career-making Olympic medal from Beijing.
While her growing medal collection is impressive, Cogdell's biggest achievement of the month -- no, of the season, and possibly of her career -- came during the qualifying rounds in Spain.
There, she hit 75 consecutive targets -- three straight rounds of perfection that made her the second woman in the world to shoot 75x75 at an international competition. Italy's Jessica Rossi, who hit 75 straight to become the gold medalist at last summer's London Olympics, was the first.
"It was pretty intense," Cogdell recalled Tuesday. "I was actually really calm for most of the match but when you realize you have 10 targets left and you're shooting like that, you definitely start to think about it, and your nerves start to intensify and you start to do the countdown.
"The last target I was definitely really nervous and hoping I wouldn't blow all this hard work on the last shot. I hit it solid and crushed it. It was a great feeling to see that target break."
A sizable audience also saw the final clay target shatter.
"There was a pretty big crowd behind me watching," Cogdell said. "I was the only person who had shot a perfect score (of 50) through the first two rounds, and whenever that happens a lot of people want to go down and see if you choke, see how it all comes out. People get excited to see if someone can do it."
One time at practice, Cogdell broke 119 targets in a row. Before Spain, her best three-round score in a competition was 72; before Spain, she had never hit 50 straight targets in a competition.
"Until last year, the world record (for women) was 74," she said. "To see all these amazing women shooting and to know none of them had been able to shoot 75 straight, it's something you view as almost unattainable.
"It's a super-lofty goal. It's so rare to shoot a perfect score. It's definitely something I will count as one of my greatest achievements."
Cogdell returned from Spain shortly before the national championships began, and the hangover effect from the World Cup success may have slowed her a little on the first day of competition in Colorado Springs. The weather didn't help either. She shot in good weather for the first and third rounds and bad weather for the second round, and her scores reflected the conditions -- 23, 21, 23.
"There was a lot of weather in my bad round of the day," Cogdell said. "Some thunderstorms rolled in, I got rained on, the skies got pretty dark, the targets were hard to see. Then it rolled off and it was nice and sunny after my round.
"Sometimes it's just the luck of the draw whether you get stuck in bad weather or get some sunshine."
In sixth place after the first-day 67, Cogdell fired rounds of 25 and 24 on the second day and three straight rounds of 24 on the third day to claim the lead going into the fourth and final day.
She opened with a 21 in her first round Sunday but recovered with a 25 to make the field of six semifinalists. Heiden hit all 15 of her targets and Cogdell hit 14 of 15 in the semifinals to move into the gold medal match, held in dense fog.
"I was really happy with my performance, especially after the slow start," Cogdell said.
Cogdell will spend August training at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, but she said she hopes to make it back to Alaska before heading to Peru for the Sept. 14-25 world championships.
"There's a lot of competitions to train for and it's hard to get away this time of year," Cogdell said, "but I'll try to come up and see my dad and do some fishing before all the silvers are gone."
By BETH BRAGG