Joseph Grohs shoots between obstacles. Courtesy | Hillsdale College Athletic Department

Hillsdale College will host the first U.S. Practical Shooting Confederation Collegiate Championship at the Ailes Shooting Range on Sept. 28 and 29.

“This is the first time USPSA has ever done something like this,” sophomore Clara Bozzay said. “I think everyone on the team is excited for the championship because it’s a completely novel element of the sport. It’s cool to be able to create this subculture within USPSA, which is already extremely competitive and an awesome opportunity for a lot of shooters.”

Hillsdale has spearheaded the effort to bring competitive action shooting to the collegiate level, according to junior John Beecher.

“Last fall, we had the U.S. Naval Academy come over and shoot at the first head-to-head collegiate USPSA match,” senior Taylor Chen said. “With the success of that we moved forward with the plan for the upcoming 2024 collegiate USPSA championship.”

The Hillsdale Action Shooting Team is sponsored by Springfield Armory, who will also sponsor the upcoming championship at Hillsdale. Chen said Hillsdale’s team has competed at a high level for years and sought to help create a true collegiate program.

“It was a long time in the making,” Chen said. “Four years ago there was only one collegiate championship format and that organization was called the Scholastic Action Shooting Program. However, it was primarily designed for middle school and high school teams, so it had a lot of rules and regulations that catered towards a younger group of individuals.”

Bozzay said she never thought action shooting would be a sport she could compete in at the collegiate level.

“I shot a little bit with my dad back home and that is what got me into the sport,” Bozzay said. “I never took it seriously or as an option for a collegiate sport until now.”

Bozzay said she tried out in the spring but was encouraged to try again in the fall. She was on the team for one week before her first match.

“They onboarded two other people, and I got an email encouraging me to practice over the summer a little bit and try out again,” Bozzay said. “It was a really low-stress tryout, and the coach wasn’t expecting anything perfect, so there is low pressure going into the opening competition this weekend.” 

Hillsdale’s Action Shooting team offers its new members a unique opportunity as the team goes into this United States Practical Shooting Association season with the upcoming championship.

“It was a fast turnaround, especially for the new recruits, but we’re really excited,” Bozzay said.

Action shooting consists of stages where each team member must shoot a series of targets with both speed and accuracy, according to Beecher.

“It’s similar to golf. A six stage match would be like a six hole golf course,” Beecher said. “You go to a bay and then they have a different array of targets and different shooters are in different spots with different obstacles. You have to plan your course of fire and then shoot them as quickly and accurately as possible. Then your score is the number of points based on how accurate you were on each target divided by the number of seconds it took.”

The championship, hosted by Hillsdale, will include six stages for each day of the competition.

While action shooting teams are typically only prominent at service academies and colleges with ROTC programs, Beecher said Hillsdale hopes to bring competitive action shooting to colleges across the country.

“We’re trying to use this to help other colleges get their action shooting programs off the ground,” Beecher said. “Hillsdale definitely has the foremost program in the country. We’re trying to make it so that other schools can also have something similar to Hillsdale’s program, where they have their own range and they’re a varsity sport.”