Last week, the Hillsdale College shotgun team went to nationals for the fourth time, and brought home its third Division III championship from San Antonio.
Hillsdale’s 10-person team is the only one in recent years to earn back-to-back division titles, besides Lindenwood University, a Division I team with close to 100 shooters.
The team has attended the NRA-sponsored national championship every year since its 2011 inception.
While many students traveled south or visited family during spring break, the shotgun team remained on campus, gearing up for the annual Association of College Unions International Collegiate Clay Target Championships. The tournament is a marathon for shooters, with almost six full days of shooting, most days including practice and setup for the next day’s events.
Tuesday started with the 5-stand competition, which lasted the duration of the tournament. The next five days included all of the other events that comprise the sport: international trap and skeet, sporting clays, American skeet, and Sunday’s event, American trap.
“For the first time in a while, we were behind another team by targets,” senior Joe Kain said. “By Thursday, it was really clear that we had to start shooting better, so it just got more and more intense until it was over.”
One of the most incredible feats of the week occurred on Sunday, the last day of the championships. Six hundred students shot in that day’s American trap event.
Thirteen of them hit 100 of 100 targets: a perfect round. Those 13 were pulled into a shoot-off. Of the 13, three shot another perfect round of 25 targets. Two of those were Hillsdale students, sophomores Kie Kababik and Clay Moniot. Kababik and Moniot went into a second shoot-off with a student from Lindenwood. Moniot hit all 15 targets, Kababik dropped one, and the Lindenwood shooter finished third with 13. Kababik’s and Moniot’s exemplary performances made Hillsdale the Division III American Trap Champion.
Hillsdale also won the international trap and sporting clay events and placed second in American and international skeet.
Carl said he was most impressed by the team’s mental toughness and unity, which pushed each member to excel. As a shooter progresses from beginner to expert, mental fortitude, more than technical skill, becomes the most essential quality for success.
“Our shooters relied on their foundation, their mental process. It really came together for us in a beautiful way,” coach Mike Carl said. “They just relied on their fundamentals and the strength of their mental game. And it won us the nationals.”
Though Hillsdale’s team shows great skill each year, its journey to first at this year’s nationals was rockier than expected. The team did not perform at its peak for the first couple days of the tournament.
Kain and Carl say it was the strength of the team as a whole that enabled them to pull off the victory. In order to win, Hillsdale’s nine shooters (one did not participate) had to put up three top scores per event.
“Each of our shooters has their own specialty,” Carl said. “On some days, people whose strongest event was up — they didn’t necessarily perform — but we had other people that stepped up. Our kids are such great shooters across the board that we were able to fill in the gaps.”
Pfaff attested to the close-knit nature of the team.
“Shooting in high school is very much like shooting for yourself,” Pfaff said. “Even though you’re on a team, it’s just like a group that you’re with. But this is very much shooting for the team.”
For next year, the coaches are aiming for another national victory, either in Division III or II. The team shot in Division II in 2013 and took seventh place at nationals.
“We kind of like these national championships. I truly think that our goal is to win again,” Carl said. “If we go into Division II, it’ll be because we think we can win Division II.”