Stetson Bardfield On Being Named To Paralympic Team: ‘I Can’t Even Put It Into Words’

Thanks to an additional International Paralympic Committee (IPC) quota that was awarded to Team USA, Stetson Bardfield will be the seventh member of the Paralympic Games U.S. Shooting Team. Bardfield will shoot the R5 Mixed 10-meter Air Rifle Prone SH2 event in Tokyo.

Stetson Bardfield has been named to the U.S. Paralympic Team.

Bardfield mentioned that he is honored to be selected for the Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 Team after competing for the better part of a decade, and looks forward to applying himself on the firing line in Japan.

“I’m surprised, I can’t even put it into words. I’ve been shooting for about seven years, two of those at the junior club level, so from the time I was named to the development team until now it's just been an incredible journey. My biggest thing is teaching people not to set limits on themselves. So many people set limits on themselves and even me, and through shooting and in every facet of my life I’ve tried to constantly break those limits.

In 2014, Bardfield began his competitive shooting career after his family moved to Ft. Carson in Colorado Springs, Colo. He was introduced to shooting at the Warrior Games after watching USMC Sgt. Pedro Aquino compete in shooting and swimming. At the time, Bardfield didn’t know that shooting was a Paralympic sport. On his first day of practicing rifle, he fired a perfect 10.9 score. In 2018, Bardfield was one of two junior athletes attending the first Junior Paralympics. In 2019, he won a gold medal in the R5 Mixed 10-meter Air Rifle Prone SH2 event at the ParaPan American Games—the same event he will compete in at the Paralympic Games in Japan.

“Bardfield is inspirationally humble in his approach to everything he does,” said USA Shooting National Paralympic Coach Don Stith. “He takes nothing for granted including the people there to support him. There wasn’t a moment in the recent World Cup in Lima where he was not helping his teammates. Having him on the team he truly fulfills the last piece of the puzzle of this well-rounded team.”

Bardfield will join fellow U.S. Paralympic shooters McKenna Geer, Taylor Farmer, Jazmin Almlie-Ryan, John Wayne Joss III, Kevin Nguyen and YanXiao Gong in Tokyo.

Learn more at USAShooting.org.