Aiming High for the Future

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If shooting sports has to have a wider and far reaching audience, we have to start with kids at school. The same with pro-gun knowledge dissemination.

Source: http://www.americanrifleman.org/Article ... 1919&cid=0

Competitive collegiate-level shooting is gaining popularity as more schools open up to the sport.

Sara Simpson isn’t what you’d call a typical college student. Yes, she’s majoring in biology and secondary education, enjoys hanging out with her friends and plays a varsity sport, but if you glance around her room, you won’t find a basketball jersey, soccer cleats or volleyball gear. You’ll find a Beretta Teknys with Optima chokes. Sara is a proud member of one of the best clay target shooting teams in the country—and it’s helped to put her through school.

“While being here I've met a lot of people and have been given a lot of great opportunities I wouldn't otherwise have had,” says Sara, a 20-year old junior at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo. “Although being on a team and in college is a careful balance, it has been a combination that I really appreciate.”

Sara isn’t alone. Shooting sports on the collegiate level have grown tremendously in recent years, and with the support of Lindenwood, the NRA and other groups, shooting is starting to be seen as a viable path to help put students like Sara through school. Not only are colleges recognizing such sports as legitimate extracurricular activities in high school, but institutions are also recruiting top shooters from around the country to develop strong competition at the collegiate level.

Before the renewed interest, the problem was institutional—a lack of continuing education programs for aspiring shooters. “You would see thousands of kids at [Scholastic Clay Target Program] events, and then after high school, there was nowhere to go. They get dumped off,” says Shawn Dulohery, Sara’s coach at Lindenwood. As a former Sgt. 1st Class with the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit and 2004 Olympian, Dulohery knows the competitive shooting game. “It seems like the responsibility of colleges to protect the sport.”

Protect is a mild way to describe it. Lindenwood’s Shooting Team, boasting six consecutive national championships in clay target shooting, has expanded its program from 56 team members to 90 in the past year. “We could be just as successful with a smaller team,” says Mike Elam, shooting director of administrative operations for Lindenwood, “but we want to grow the sport.”

Special collegiate shooting programs and scholarships from schools such as Lindenwood, and Bethel University in Mackenzie, Tenn., have helped provide opportunities to college-bound shooters that haven’t existed before. This school-based funding is now integrating with the organizational support necessary to create and build a viable sport. Any club trying to start now will have the benefit of the NRA’s start-up guides and dedicated staff, as well as support from groups like the National Shooting Sport Foundation, which recently launched its College Shooting Sports Initiative (CSSI). The CSSI provides a total of $75,000 in grant funding to start-up and existing clubs at universities and colleges across the country.

Contributions from the NRA and NSSF, along with the growing recognition of schools like Lindenwood and Bethel University, have all been factors in encouraging high-school students to train for shooting as a viable sport, both for college and beyond. “The earlier you start, the better,” says Dulohery, “but the students continue to get better over the course of their lives, into their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s.”

Sara says she definitely plans to continue her shooting after she graduates. “You can't just put down your gun and walk away from it. Once you start, competitive shooting is part of who you are.”