Lauren Kalil’s series with the 2025 Tactical Games National Champions continues with one of the sport’s true OGs—a competitor who got a stage DQ at Nationals and still walked away with the title.
Meg Kennedy has been competing in Tactical Games since 2019, back when the women’s division was three or four athletes total. She won Women’s Elite in 2021, then watched the weights climb year after year until she made a decision that some might view negatively: she dropped down to Women’s Tactical.
This year, she won her second consecutive Tactical division championship. But the way she won it is what makes the story worth telling.
On Stage 13, muscle memory kicked in at the wrong moment. She stood up from a tank trap, started loading her pistol, and heard “Stop, stop, stop, stop.” Her foot was six inches to the right of the red line she was supposed to be touching. Not a forward-backward issue—just needed to step left. She didn’t. Stage DQ. Zero points.
She was leading by about 65 points going into that stage. Suddenly she was 30 points down with two stages left.
Most competitors would spiral. Meg just thought: well, that’s that. Nothing I can do about it. Let’s see what happens.
She won anyway.
Lauren’s conversation covered everything from the evolution of women’s divisions in the sport, to implementing Tactical Games-style training in police departments, to why Meg’s sparkly pink grip tape is actually functional, and why she’s considering sitting out Nationals next year.
Meg Kennedy didn’t touch a firearm until she was old enough to buy one. She knew she was going into law enforcement as a reserve officer, so she walked into a store, purchased a gun, and had to learn on her own. No family background. No childhood hunting trips. Just a woman figuring it out because she needed to for her career.
That’s what makes her early success in Tactical Games so interesting. When she showed up to her first event in 2019, she wasn’t an exceptional shooter or athlete. What she had was weapons manipulation skills—the mechanics of handling a firearm safely and efficiently under stress. Years on her agency’s SWAT team had drilled those fundamentals deep.
The sport found her through social media. Her sister owns a gym, so Meg was already posting fitness content. She added some gun stuff as she got more familiar with firearms. Someone saw it, reached out, and said she should try this thing called Tactical Games.
She showed up to North Carolina not knowing what she was getting into. Carla was there—one of the original OGs. Meg had actually broken her foot about six weeks before and got lucky it healed enough to compete. She didn’t know until the next event in Florida, when she rebroke it, that it had still been broken the whole time.
That’s the kind of competitor Meg Kennedy is. Broken foot? Compete anyway. Figure out the damage later.
When Meg started, there was one women’s division with four or five competitors. That was normal for a couple years. The 2020 Georgia event had three women total: Carla, Meg, and one other whose name escaped her during the interview.
Now there’s 50+, 40+, Intermediate, Tactical, and Elite. The growth has been dramatic.
What changed? A few things, according to Meg:
Social media broke down barriers. People are scared of what they don’t know. Firearms are intimidating if you didn’t grow up around them. But now you can watch YouTube videos and Instagram content showing how to handle weapons safely. The mechanics aren’t mysterious anymore. That comfort level pushed more women to try competition.
Athlete camps helped. Tactical Games pushed hard to get women comfortable—come out, try it, learn what you need, then compete. Lower the barrier to entry.
Volunteering created a pipeline. A lot of women currently competing volunteered first. They watched an event, realized they could do it, asked what they needed, got the tools, and showed up to race. Seeing it firsthand made it less scary than imagining it from the outside.
The community’s welcoming nature sealed the deal. Everyone who comes out says the same thing: they couldn’t believe how inclusive it was, how willing people were to help. That reputation spreads.
Meg recently moved departments, relocating to Georgia about two years ago. She works patrol—and that’s exactly where she wants to be. She loves the variety, the difference every day. Other divisions have been offered. Not interested.
She does Field Training Officer work, bringing up new officers. And she’s become heavily involved with her SWAT team, currently running the training program.
Does she use Tactical Games concepts in that training? Absolutely.
There’s only so much stress you can simulate in law enforcement training. You can use UTM rounds—those little paintball-like projectiles that hurt when they hit you during room-clearing exercises. Pain creates stress. But fitness is the other reliable stressor. When you’re exhausted, you still have to be accurate, maintain a clear mental space, handle your weapon properly.
Tactical Games-style workouts translate directly. Meg uses them on the range because they force officers to perform under the kind of physical duress they might actually face.
Last year, Meg got her entire department transitioned to pistols with red dots. New pistol, new holster, red dot optics—she was responsible for the training that made it happen.
That’s a significant shift in law enforcement. Many departments stick with iron sights because that’s what they’ve always done. But red dots are faster to acquire, easier to learn, and there’s no good reason not to use them. Departments are starting to see that.
The bigger battle is changing the old-school “shoot slow” mentality. Traditional training emphasizes pulling the trigger really slowly to avoid influencing the gun. But that’s not realistic. Nobody in a use-of-force scenario is going to politely wait while you squeeze off a careful shot. You need to perform under high stress, shoot fast and accurately, especially at close distances.
Meg never learned any of that in basic law enforcement training or yearly qualifications. The only place she got it was on the SWAT team. Which is great for SWAT—but what about everyone else?
The problem is that cops are often afraid of being shown up by civilians, so they don’t come to competitions. They dismiss it as “just competition world, not real world.” But side-by-side videos are changing that perception. A USPSA stage and a real shooting look identical in terms of movement, accuracy requirements, and getting on the gun quickly. Competition skills translate directly.
Meg’s brought this to her current department. She’s gotten five, six, seven officers to at least try local pistol competitions. They learned they weren’t as good as they could be, and they’ve all tried to improve. That’s the shift she wants to see: officers recognizing they have room to grow and actually pursuing it.
Her department now runs an open range every Monday for people to come shoot. That’s not normal—many departments don’t do it because of budget and ammo concerns. But hers sees the benefit. This year, 82% of officers hit expert rate on their firearms qualification. Only three failed the initial qual out of the whole department. That number used to be 50% higher.
Progress is possible. It just takes people willing to push for it.
Meg won Women’s Elite at Nationals in 2021. Then she watched the weights climb.
If you know Meg Kennedy, you know she’s been fighting about women’s division weights for years. Right, wrong, or indifferent—she’s been vocal. The progression went up faster than the current field could handle, in her view.
The breaking point was the 200-pound sandbag.
In 2022 or 2023 (she mixed up the years during the interview), the heaviest sandbag women had ever used was 150 pounds. Then 200 showed up in competition. Meg was ROing that event and fought it—told Jake Meiselle they were jumping 50 pounds, that it was crazy. Now it’s standard.
That year’s Inman variation destroyed her. Five reps at 100, three at 150, one at 200—and if you couldn’t get the 200, you had to do four more at 150. So seven reps at 150 after already doing eight reps at the lighter weights.
She got to round three in 15 minutes. Her back wasn’t the same afterward. She was in tears. It wasn’t fun. Not the kind of push she enjoys, where something is hard but doable. This was watching herself fail at something she physically couldn’t complete.
She held on as long as she could. One of the last OGs—along with Cal and Blair—to maintain in Elite as a smaller athlete. But eventually she made the call: this isn’t for me anymore.
Some people might look negatively on dropping divisions after competing at Elite. Meg’s response: the only thing she was “crushing” in Tactical was the shooting. And shooting doesn’t change between divisions. Why should she be penalized for not being able to handle elite-level fitness weights when her shooting is competitive?
She tried to go back for one regional event this year. The weights were more comparable to previous years, but she could see the trend continuing upward. She made the decision again: Tactical is where she belongs.
She hopes others in similar situations feel encouraged to make the same choice. Nobody’s given her crap for it. The sport isn’t paying her bills. She’s doing it for personal growth, for fun, for competition. Standing at a stage unable to move the implement isn’t competition—it’s just suffering without purpose.
For five years, Meg competed with a certain understanding of how stages worked. You had a shooters box—a line you passed, and then you were clear to draw and load. That’s evolved. Now there are red sticks at some stages, not all. You need a foot touching the line before you can start your pistol work.
Stage 13 at Nationals. She’d just shot rifle from behind a tank trap. Same shooting position she’d used for years. Muscle memory kicked in: stand up from the tank trap, start loading the pistol.
“Stop, stop, stop, stop.”
Her foot was six inches to the right of the red line. Not forward of it—just laterally off. She needed to step left. She didn’t.
It was briefed. She didn’t argue. Nothing unsafe happened—if it had, she’d have been match DQ’d entirely. This was a technicality, a stage DQ. Zero points.
Going into that stage, she was up about 65 points overall. Suddenly she was down roughly 30 with two stages remaining.
The RO thanked her for how she reacted. Her response: of course it’s my fault. Why would I argue about a mistake I made? Nobody made her not put her foot on that line. That was on her.
The acceptance came fast. This wasn’t something she couldn’t physically do. This wasn’t an unfair standard or someone else’s error. Just her own mistake, fully owned. So why spiral? Why riot? Nothing to be done except see what happens.
That level-headedness is probably why she won the next stage and clawed back the 30 points she’d lost. Bailey, her closest competitor, missed some targets she didn’t realize she’d missed. Meg gained everything back and entered the final stage with a two-point lead.
They tied the final stage. She won by those two points.
If she’d spiraled after the DQ, there’s no way she pulls that out. The mental game saved a championship that the rule book should have taken away.
Meg has won Nationals three times now: Elite in 2021, Tactical in 2024, and Tactical again in 2025. Each felt different.
2021 was a bittersweet grind. She’d rolled her ankle badly the day before competition while testing the nine-foot wall—her Solomons slipped off a 2×4 support, her ankle turned sideways with a loud pop, and it blew up immediately. She thought she’d traveled to Texas for nothing.
Day one had an insanely heavy lift sled they’ve never seen again, plus the heaviest farmer carry ever. Her taped-up ankle wanted to give out the entire time.
Day two was a ruck run she’d been training hard for. Two-mile loops with increasing weight—20 pounds, then 40, then 60 for the final two miles. Six miles total. She decided she didn’t care about her ankle. She was going to win that ruck run.
She destroyed most of the field, including a lot of men. She still holds it against Jared that she went faster than him with 60 pounds on her back. The consistency across stages plus that dominant ruck performance is probably why she won the whole event.
2024 felt good—first Tactical title, proving she could compete at the top of a different division.
2025 was complicated. The DQ created guilt. She felt bad for Bailey, who briefly thought she’d won due to a scoreboard error before the arbitration corrected it. In some ways, Meg felt like she’d cheated—getting a zero and still winning doesn’t feel clean.
But another part of her was proud. She did that. With a DQ, with a zero-point stage, she still found a way. Both feelings coexist.
The Concept2 StrengthErg stage was supposed to be her weakness. Not a sprinter, not built for that kind of effort. Super high anxiety going in. This is going to suck.
She’d never touched the StrengthErg before Nationals. Greg from Concept2 walked competitors through strategy: keep the damper at one the whole time, regardless of the movement. People who set it heavier couldn’t maintain speed. Speed accumulated more than resistance.
It was awful. Absolutely awful. But she won it.
That shocked her. She didn’t expect to win that stage at all. Those extra points are probably the only reason she was able to survive the DQ later and still take the overall title.
The aftermath wasn’t pretty—she wasn’t okay for 25 minutes after finishing. Thought she was going to puke. Finally felt human around the 20-minute mark.
Then she went and got a stage DQ on the next one. High to low in record time.
You have to laugh about it. Otherwise you’ll cry.
Meg thinks the current rule might be too harsh. Not touching the red line isn’t unsafe—if it were, why was she shooting rifle from the same position two seconds earlier? The tank trap was in the same area.
In a perfect world, it would be a three-minute penalty, not a DQ. Harsh enough to matter, but not an automatic zero for a technicality.
The bigger issue is consistency. Some people get warned (“Hey, don’t forget your foot on the line”), some don’t. That’s human error—unavoidable when athletes judge other athletes. Nobody wants to call someone on a miss or a technicality. This isn’t paying anyone’s bills. Everyone’s here to have fun and get better.
But you can’t eliminate the human element. The sport isn’t at the monetary level for professional judges, and probably won’t be for a long time, if ever. Even CrossFit, around for 20 years, still has conversations about judging standards.
It’s complicated. Everyone’s doing their best.
She’s thinking about branching out. USPSA specifically—she wants to get really good at it, at least A class or better. The two-gun stage at Nationals showed her she could do pretty well in that space. Totally attainable.
As of now, she’s not planning to do Nationals next year. Give it to somebody else to fight for. She doesn’t want to just sit out there and crush. She’ll stay in the sport—she loves the combination of shooting and fitness—but she wants to try other things too.
She’ll definitely do the Florida regional event. It’s close, and Vanessa’s doing it. They’ve talked about doing a team event together. And eventually, she needs to bring her sister back—they were one of the first sister duos back in 2021. Her sister had some kids, hasn’t touched a firearm in a few years, but it’s not that she couldn’t compete. Just needs prep work. The Kennedy duo will return someday.
Meg gave Lauren a tour of her competition setup:
All black everything. The exact opposite of Jacob Heppner’s rainbow wall of custom Cerakote jobs. When Lauren asked about the differences between her guns, Meg laughed: they all kind of look the same.
But that sparkly grip tape—Lauren’s still obsessed with it.
Meg’s story reinforces several principles:
Accept mistakes immediately. When you can’t change something, don’t waste energy fighting it. The faster you accept and move on, the faster you can execute what’s still in your control.
Division changes aren’t failures. Dropping from Elite to Tactical wasn’t giving up—it was competing where she could actually compete. Standing at a stage unable to move the weight isn’t competition. Find where you belong.
Weapons manipulation can carry you early. Meg wasn’t the best shooter or athlete when she started. But her handling skills from SWAT training kept her competitive while she developed everything else.
Consistency beats occasional brilliance. Meg’s never been the best competitor at any single event, but she’s always been consistent. That reliability across 12-16 stages is what wins championships.
Competition skills transfer to real work. The shooting, the stress management, the performance under fatigue—it all applies to her actual job. And she’s bringing that knowledge back to her department.
The community sees itself in newcomers. Everyone started knowing nothing. That shared experience creates a willingness to help that might not exist in a more established sport.
Meg Kennedy got a zero on Stage 13 and won the championship anyway. That’s not luck—that’s five years of mental conditioning paying off in the moment it mattered most.
Watch the full interview on Lauren Kalil’s YouTube channel, Queen of Hustle. This is part of her series catching up with all the 2025 Tactical Games National Champions. You can follow Lauren on Instagram or visit her website at laurenkalil.com.
