Gracie Hensley doesn’t necessarily come across as someone who you would expect to shoot shotguns competitively. In fact, the Shelbyville native is pretty open about it. That hasn’t stopped her from making a name for herself on not just the American stage, but the international stage as well after she took home silver at the ISSF Junior World Championships in Lima, Peru, on September 30th.

“You look at me and I like to do my hair and I like to dress nice when I’m not shooting and you would never guess that I’m a competitive shotgun shooter,” the 5’4, 100 lb Hensley said. “I definitely get looks of surprise. I mean on the back of my truck I’ve written ‘Peace and Love’ and I’ve got a peace sign and a heart. Then I say ‘I shoot competitive shotguns’ and they’re like ‘what?’”

Hensley, who was born and raised in Shelbyville, started shooting when she was in 7th grade at The Webb School in Bell Buckle after going to an after-school club fair with a friend.

“We had to choose two clubs I think, per semester, and I came home after the club fair and I told my parents I'm going to do hunter safety and be part of the Skeet shooting club,” Hensley recalled. I don’t think they thought I would stick with it like I have.”

“After two or three years of doing American Skeet, two older guys I shot with said we need a third person for our team at this international competition, and I was like ‘Okay’ because I didn't know the difference. I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Hensley is about to enter her fifth year of competitive skeet shooting, but that “difference” between the two types – American Skeet and International/Olympic Skeet –  is actually a pretty significant one. In American Skeet, the targets are slowed down to about 45 mph – a 10 mph decrease – and the targets come out as soon as the shooter calls for them. Another key distinction is that in International Skeet, the shooter must start with their gun at the hip instead of having it already mounted, and the shooter cannot mount his or her gun until the target actually comes out.

Hensley (pictured) with her shotgun mounted during her Silver Medal run in Peru.

Despite those differences, Hensley has fared extremely well in her competitions. Obviously, she won silver in her most recent event, but even going back to her very first shoot, she has found success, and she has been hooked ever since. 

“I’m not athletically built at all. I am 5’4, I am like 100 lbs, I cannot run fast, I’m just not an athletic person, but you don’t need to be that athletic to shoot a shotgun. There’s no running and there’s no jumping,” Hensley explained with a laugh. “I actually won the first American competition I ever went to, and I’m very competitive and I love to win, so that might also have something to do with why I’ve stuck with it.” 

Her first competition of 2024 was in March, out west in Tuscon, AZ, for Olympic Selection matches, prior to the Paris Olympics.

“Mathematically I was put out for the 2024 Olympics because I had to have gone overseas and we work off of a points system, but in Tuscon we were also deciding our Junior team,” Hensley said. “I got gold in U-21 Women, so I made the Junior team back in March, and I was 7th overall if you were to include the Senior [adult] women too.”

An impressive performance to start the year, but Hensley was nowhere near finished. Over the summer, Hensley found herself on an overseas flight to Italy for the Junior World Cup. Unfortunately, her first-ever overseas competition didn’t come without some major hurdles to work through. 

“I think I got like 15th, and I shut down in that shoot,” Hensley admitted. “I struggled a lot, and I didn’t lean on my team. I secluded myself, but I definitely learned a lot from that experience.”

Even though her trip to Italy in July didn’t go as planned, she still had the Junior Olympic Selection shoot coming up in September. That competition was immediately followed on the calendar with a week-long trip to South America in Lima, Peru.

“I ended up getting bronze as a Junior [Olympian] in Michigan, and the Michigan shoot was part one of our selection matches, so it was only American shooters at that shoot,” she said. 

After winning Bronze up north, she immediately boarded an overnight flight headed for Peru for the Junior World Championships, but this time, she was prepared for her week-long stay outside of the country.

“Overall, I’m a pretty quiet person. I’m not all that outgoing, but I realized that I didn’t have that many friends, especially not overseas because I may be shooting with people that can’t even speak my language,” Hensley explained. “So I decided that I’m going to talk to the people that live in my country, and I need to be friends with them. I actually hung out with my teammates and talked to them. I allowed myself to be alone when I needed to be, but I was part of my team in Peru. I was the only one who was new to the team this year, so even though I wasn't the youngest kid on the team, I was still considered the baby. I worked on talking to them and I feel like that really helped me come out of my shell so I could do what I know I can do out on the field.”

“I think it was imperative for me to stumble a bit in Italy for me to succeed in Peru.”

Succeed she certainly did, shooting a 115 in the qualifying rounds to finish atop the leaderboard heading into the Finals and landing her in Bib One. Her score also contributed to her winning the Bronze Medal in the team event as well (Team medals are determined by shooters’ qualification scores added together). 

A quick note on the format: On the first day a shooter will shoot three qualifying rounds. On the second day they shoot two more qualifying rounds, and then there is a 60-shot final. Only the top six qualifiers go into the Finals. In this round, your qualifying score is thrown out after the shooters are placed in order of their qualifying score. Hensley had the highest qualifying score, so she was placed in Bib One. After every 10 shots, the person with the lowest score is eliminated until a winner is determined after the 60 total shots. In the event of any ties, the higher Bib Number stays. 

In the Finals, Hensley was neck-and-neck with Great Britain’s Madeleine Russell until Russell closed hitting 18 of her final 20 attempts to win the Gold Medal by just three shots, 51-48.

Hensley (pictured) reloading during the World Championships in Lima, Peru.

“I always go for gold,” Hensley emphasized. “I don’t go into a finals saying ‘welp, guess I’ll get silver,’ my goal is always gold, but I also know statistically speaking, some people have been shooting overseas for years and have never gotten a medal. So, I was probably slightly surprised that I had done so well considering this is only my second time overseas, but I also want to be the best I can every time I go out there.”

The difference between Italy and Peru was stark, not just in her comfort level and on the scoreboard, but in terms of how she interacted with her teammates on a daily basis before, during, and after the competition.

“It takes me all day to shoot three rounds. I have like two hours in between rounds during a competition, and every country is assigned a table. What I do is I always have decks of cards with me, but in Peru one of my friends took a piece of cardboard and wrote ‘International Casino’ on it, so we’d play cards to relax in between all of our rounds,” Hensley said.

“We played Vendetta quite a bit with skittles.”

There was even a difference in how her and her teammates were able to utilize their off-days. In Italy, they were given two days to be a tourist; however, in Peru, there was never any tourist option available to them.  

  “The first day I got to Peru, we landed at 5 a.m. because I had an overnight flight [from Detroit], and for some reason we sat at the range for a couple hours that day with our suitcases before eventually going to our hotel. We just kind of hung out that day; I maybe read a little bit and I like to crochet and knit so I was probably doing that as well. Then we had a couple days of ‘open practice’ where you can shoot whatever you want, but most people just shoot rounds those days. Then we had our official training day which is where we shoot three rounds, nothing more nothing less, and then you leave. Then it was time for the competition.”

After winning the Silver Medal by 10 shots, Hensley finally returned home after two long weeks of strenuous competition. However, she returned with a different understanding of how to train herself.

"I've put a lot of time in training in how to shoot targets, so I'd say that's one of my strengths, but something I think a lot of athletes sometimes forget to train is their mind. People can tell you it’s the same target or it’s the same stage, but there’s something different about getting on a plane for 6-10 hours, stepping off in a different country, and then saying ‘now go do your job as best you can,’” she said. 

Now? Hensley’s goals are pretty simple: qualify for the Junior team for 2025, train and compete, and then get ready to start attempting to qualify for the Senior team for the upcoming 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. 

“I will spend a lot of time at my home range shooting,” Hensley explained. “I like to shoot sporting clays a lot as practice because that helps you learn how to point a gun. I’d like to make the Junior team again. We have our Part 2 selection match in January which will be in West Palm. That would give me more travel opportunities because if I made that team then I would go to Germany in the summer. I may not have shot my best in Michigan, but I still did well enough to put myself in a good spot to make the team.”

For Hensley, it isn’t lost on her what it means to compete at such a high level, and her sense of humor allows her to relax and not feel the weight of her entire hometown on her shoulders.

“It’s definitely pretty cool [representing Shelbyville],” Hensley concluded.”You have something to say when people are like ‘introduce yourself!’ and I’m like, ‘hi, I’ve been overseas, I’m on Team USA!’”