Hillsdale College’s shotgun team boasts a top-tier Division III program and hopes to increase its standing this week at the ACY National Championship in San Antonio, Texas, after a successful competition at the Delta Conference in Arkansas.
The national championship features teams from all three divisions, but new teams are automatically classified as Division III. The team remains Division III for a certain amount of time and then can move up. But if a team wins the Division III competition, it can move up early.
The two-year-old team is coached by Bart Spieth, lecturer at the college, and led by co-captains junior Blake Scott and junior Dan Klimas.
The team heads into nationals with a lot of momentum from last week’s Delta Conference. This was not a collegiate meet, but a master and elite level course in which world-class shooters competed. It was an individual meet where the Chargers were so successful that they brought home over $7,000 in winnings for the College shooting program.
Each member of the Hillsdale team is referred to as an “A” shooter, meaning they average over 95 out of 100 shots on target in competition.
Freshman Joe Kain was one of six Hillsdale shooters to place in Arkansas. Top shooters included Scott, Kain, and junior Andrew Smith. Kain placed sixth in A class, and Scott and senior Kyle Jazwiecki placed fifth and seventh, respectively, in B class. In D class, Smith took first, senior Nate Oberholtzer fifth, and freshman Ed Trancik eighth.
“I worked all winter for this competition, and it was a great accomplishment,” Kain said.
Winter training included a “drive-hard system,” where a laser on the barrel of a gun allows the gunman to shoot at targets in a wall indoors, as well as bundling up and practicing in the cold.
In the Delta Conference, competitors walked through the woods from station to station, shooting sporting clays. In a collegiate meet, such as the ACY nationals in Texas, every member of Hillsdale’s team will compete in six different events — American Trap, American Skeet, International Trap, International Skeet, Sporting Plays, and Five Stands.
A competition lasts for multiple days, with shooters participating in one or two events per day. The goal, Scott said, is to be able to successfully shift gears between different events. The scores of the top five shooters from each team are added together, and a winner is declared for the meet.
As the team travels to nationals, where it will compete against over 80 schools and over 500 shooters, the focus of the season shifts from solo accomplishments to a group orientation.
“In Texas, we are looking for team wins, where as before we were looking for individual performance,” Scott said.
Scott said he is optimistic about his team’s chances to win Division III so that it can move up to Division II next season.
“We are in a good position to shoot well at nationals,” Scott said. “Arkansas was a great pre-meet for us to see some hard targets and shoot with world-champion shooters. Texas is looking up.”
In the fall, the team traveled to Kentucky and also participated in the Michigan Team Shoot, the team’s biggest competition up until this spring. Scott shot the target 100 times in a row and earned himself a spot in the first-place shoot-off. The rest of the team shot 496 out of 500.
The team was created along with a large endowment to build and fund a shooting facility on Bakers Road, about eight miles east of campus. Because of skill shown in the advanced shooting class, administrators approached Scott and Klimas, along with the other original members, to form the team. So far, the group has proved themselves on a national scale.
Kain was recruited last year to join Hillsdale’s team. He cited the well-funded and well-coached program as the main reason for his college choice, along with the school’s excellent academic reputation. Trancik is the other freshman recruit, while the team’s other five members all picked up the sport at Hillsdale.