The ESPN Great Outdoor Games Target Sports Shotgun Event is a fast-paced head-to-head shotgun clay target event.

This year's event will feature 16 competitors divided into eight brackets. The order of competition will be determined by seeding the 1st to 3rd place winners from the 2002 Great Outdoor Games 1 to 3 accordingly, with the remainder of the field determined by random draw.

The Shotgun game pits shooters going head to head in a five-target sequence of flying, bouncing and rising shots worth one point each. Each sequence is different and targets appear in three-second intervals. The winner of this event is the one who can hit the target quickly and reload before the next one appears.

"I think this game shows more of our shooting ability," said 2001 gold medalist Doug Fuller, of Claremont, Okla., moments before being eliminated at last summer's event. "Instead of spot shooting, you are actually making the right kind of moves and swings at the target."

In the 2002 Great Outdoor Games Shotgun competition Robbie Purser, a UPS employee from Macon, Ga., and Tre' Sides, a power company lineman from Montgomery, Ala., were easily the two hottest shotgun shooters in the 16-person field assembled in Lake Placid.

When they met in the gold medal round, Sides and Purser had each missed only two of 80 targets. In this new clay target-shooting format, a round consists of 20 targets for each shooter. Within that round, they alternate shooting at five targets each. The targets are released 3.5 seconds apart. A competitor may have no more than two shells in the shotgun. The targets are released from three machines spaced evenly in an 85-foot line.

In each competitor's five targets, two will be "rabbits" — targets rolling and bouncing along the ground — and three will be "teal," or targets thrown relatively straight up in the air.

In the gold-medal round, Sides and Purser broke their first 10 targets each. Then Sides missed a target in his next group of five. Of course, it was a rabbit.

"That's my problem target," said Sides, who has the U.S. Sporting Clays champion in 1997 and is a seven-time Alabama state champ.

"Those are the only three targets I missed in this competition. I shoot with my head so far up on the gun so I can see the teal, I don't get down far enough on the gun for the rabbits."

Purser posted perfect scores of 20 points in three of his four rounds of the competition. It took one of those perfect rounds to edge Sides, 20-19, for the gold medal.

Purser and Sides will both be back in Reno, Nev., this summer to face off again in ESPN's Great Outdoor Games.

Registered for 2003

Tre Sides, Montgomery, Ala.
Jeff Vick, Northport, Ala.
Robbie Purser, Macon, Ga.
David McHugh, Lakeville, Conn.
Doug Koenig, Albertis, Pa.
Scott Rpbertson, Flower Mound, Texas
Bobby Fowler, Houston, Texas

Qualifying Criteria

Sixteen invitations will be extended as follows: