Olympia native Dan Lowe weaves own path to Olympics

The mental game is what spurred Dan Lowe’s fascination with rifle shooting. His adolescent mind was captivated by how small of a target he could hit. How far away he could place it. How many shots in a row he could land.

He said where he is now — on the cusp of his first Olympic appearance in Rio de Janeiro — is an “extreme evolution” of those ideas.

“It’s an individual mental game,” Lowe said. “Here’s the rifle, here’s the ammo, here’s the target. … You have to get in your head and really understand how you think, and be able to control your thoughts and your focus and your flow to keep making good shots.”

Lowe, now a Specialist in the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit based at Fort Benning, Georgia, has performed in countless competitions — he’s traveled internationally to Austria, Azerbaijan, Germany, Mexico, South Korea and Spain — in pursuit of improving his craft.

He won a U.S. Championship medal in each rifle discipline (silver in prone, bronze in air and three-position) in 2014.

“I’ve had to retrain the way I think,” Lowe said. “That’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in shooting — get all of the negativity out and get that focus, that determination, in there.

“It’s not if you’re going to do something, it’s when you’re going to do it. And you start working to make that day come sooner and sooner.”

Lowe’s day has nearly arrived. The 23-year-old from Olympia will compete in two events — the 10-meter air rifle at 5 a.m. Monday and 50-meter rifle three positions at 5 a.m. Aug. 14 — in Rio.

Though, he nearly missed qualifying for the final coveted spot on the U.S. Olympic team at Camp Perry, Ohio, in June.

“Trials, in short,” Lowe said, “was hell.”

There were two spots. Lucas Kozeniesky, who competes alongside Lowe on the U.S. national team, sailed through for one.

Lowe was in sixth place following the second day of the three-day competition. He said he sat down and accepted that watching an Olympic berth slip away was possible.

“There may not be a Hail Mary or out of left field,” he recalls thinking. “This may not happen for me.”

He went mini golfing with some friends at a local course to relax and fired off three hole-in-ones. He fired off a nearly-perfect final round to win the No. 2 spot in front of a roaring crowd on the third day.

“I’ll never forget that moment,” Lowe said. “That feeling of, ‘Oh, my God. I actually did it.’ ”

Lowe’s had a few benchmarks like that. He joined the Capitol City Rifle & Pistol Club as a teenager and shot for the Black Hills High School rifle team. He qualified for the junior national team shortly after finishing the Secondary Options school located on Black Hills’ campus, and subsequently the U.S. national team.

Now this.

“It’s great to see him achieve what he’s dreamed about,” said Karl Vogel, who has been a shooting comrade of Lowe’s for nearly a decade.

Shooting became Lowe’s constant.

“He was very focused,” Vogel said. “He could kind of tune some things out and wanted to stay on point with what he was doing. When he’s on line, ready to shoot, he’s not talkative like other guys are. He’s in his own world thinking about what he needs to do.”

Lowe created a different path. He didn’t take to traditional sports. The traditional academic route didn’t gel either.

“I’m the round peg in the square hole kind of person,” Lowe said. “I just didn’t like high school. I didn’t fit with the program so much.”

A biking accident near the end of his freshman year at Black Hills changed his course. While riding the loop at Chambers Bay Golf Course in University Place before shooting practice, Lowe crashed his mountain bike on a hairpin turn.

“I knew I was going too fast,” Lowe said. “I was trying to scrub speed off and I ended up touching the right pedal to the asphalt. I was already leaned over so hard that it took the weight off the tires and I went down. I slid probably 20 feet and the bike went down and off into the woods.”

His right ankle sucked underneath his body and broke in several places. He has nine titanium screws, a plate and two biodegradable screws in his ankle. He missed shooting practice that day, and some school.

“I ended up switching to (Secondary Options), which very much helped me out,” Lowe said. “Very good program over there. … That was a good move on my part.”

He toyed with the idea of college before he opted to continue shooting at a semipro level, and eventually joined the Army.

“It’s really satisfying,” said Laura Lowe, Dan’s mother. “When he got in the Army, he tested really well. He can do it. But to see a kid who really didn’t engage in tradition, what I did was back his strengths in shooting.

“I talked to his dad and said, ‘If he’s good enough to go to Fort Benning, let’s have him do that.’ It was a leap of faith.”

Rewarding for Laura, who pitched the idea of joining the rifle club to her son after seeing a notice calling for members scrawled on a piece of paper at work when Dan was 12.

Saturday, she’ll travel to Brazil to see him compete at the highest level.

“I’ll probably cry when I walk into the shooting range, but it will be amazing,” Laura said.

The result, Dan said, he’s less concerned about. It’s the performance that matters.

“You don’t need to walk the normal path to be successful,” Dan said. “Most people in life that are above and beyond successful do not walk the normal path anyways.

“If you’re not going to walk the normal path, you need to be smart, you need to be creative, you need to be thinking on your feet and you need to be very resolute in what you want to do.”

He has that much figured out. But to be surrounded by who he calls the most “dedicated, passionate, intelligent, driven people on the planet” in Rio? He’s quite enamored.

“To go to the Olympics … ”

Dan trailed off, searching to describe the journey that has led him to this stage.

“It’s a lot of pride,” he mustered. “Very, very honored. It’s hard to describe in words that do it justice. Having this dream for a decade and finally seeing it through — but knowing you were so close to losing it — it’s the best feeling in the world. … This is one of the greatest tings that will every happen to me in my life.”

This story was originally published August 5, 2016 at 7:39 PM with the headline "Olympia native Dan Lowe weaves own path to Olympics."