Collyn "Whitly" Loper (born December 31, 1986, in Jackson, Mississippi) is an American sport shooter. She won a gold medal in trap shooting at the

2003 Pan American Games The 2003 Pan American Games were held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, from August 1 to 17, 2003. The successful bid for the games was made in the mid-1990s, when Dominican Republic had one of the highest growth rates in Latin America. Al ...

in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and eventually finished fourth at the

2004 Summer Olympics The 2004 Summer Olympics ( el, Θερινοί Ολυμπιακοί Αγώνες 2004, ), officially the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad ( el, Αγώνες της 28ης Ολυμπιάδας, ) and also known as Athens 2004 ( el, Αθήνα 2004), ...

in Athens, narrowly missing out an opportunity to claim an Olympic medal. Since the age of fourteen, Loper has been serving throughout her sporting career for the U.S. national team, and trains rigorously under her longtime coach Lloyd Woodhouse. Naturally right-handed, Loper was born blind in her right eye that urged her to shoot left. Having pursued the sport since the age of twelve, Loper started out as a successful junior with her third-place finish in the women's trap on her first major international competition at the 2001 World Championships in

Cairo, Egypt Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...

. Two years later, Loper boasted her early success to the sport by claiming the gold medal at the

Pan American Games The Pan American Games (also known colloquially as the Pan Am Games) is a continental multi-sport event in the Americas featuring summer sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The competition is held ...

in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, finishing ahead of Canada's Cynthia Meyer by a three-point lead 87 to 84. With her noteworthy triumph, Loper also secured an Olympic berth for the U.S. shooting team. At the

in Athens, Loper competed as the youngest member of the U.S. shooting team (aged 17) in the

women's trap A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or Adolescence, adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female hum ...

. Five months before the Games, Loper finished first in a grueling shoot-off against Joetta Dement at the U.S. Olympic trials in Fort Benning, Georgia to keep her own Olympic place that she obtained from the Pan American Games. As one of the possible frontrunners vying for an Olympic medal in the sporting event, Loper put up her own monumental effort with a qualifying score of 62 hits out of a possible 75 to grab the third seed in the six-woman final, but narrowly missed out on a potential medal by just one target that allowed her South Korean rival Lee Bo-na to snatch the bronze, finishing only in fourth with a total score of 82. Admittedly, Loper broke her family's promise not to take a quick glimpse of the scoreboard as a result of her medal failure.

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* * * 1986 births Living people American female sport shooters Olympic shooters for the United States Shooters at the 2004 Summer Olympics Shooters at the 2003 Pan American Games Pan American Games gold medalists for the United States in shooting Sportspeople from Jackson, Mississippi Medalists at the 2003 Pan American Games 21st-century American sportswomen 20th-century American women {{US-sportshooting-bio-stub