#7 in the World

Andy Szofran, a member of the USA World Championship casting team is shown here. He finished in seventh place in the accuracy part of the 2026 championships, his first trip to the Worlds. Here he's casting in a local contest (the Wretched Mess Fest) about a month after the Worlds. He hadn't been casting at all between these events, and this video shows how touch can fade quickly without consistent training. Andy's stroke is forearm and wrist dependent at short distances. At the longer targets, you can see he starts to pivot in the shoulder. I teach and coach to pivot in the shoulder at all distances (see Whitney Gould), but there are some really great casters that use the same stroke as Andy. Steve Rajeff and Jeff Wagner come to mind as examples. I believe we're more consistent with a single stroke for all distances, rather than pivoting in the elbow on short casts and then moving that pivot point to the shoulder on longer casts. But each caster has to experiment with this on their own and Andy is still working with both ways. The targets in this contest are smaller than those at the World Championships. There was also a swirling wind present, which made it tough for casters that competed in the afternoon.