The action shooting team prepares for Talladega in the cold weather.
Courtesy | Carly Moran
The Hillsdale action shooting team will be fighting for first place next weekend at the Scholastic Action Shooting Program College Action National Championships.
The SASP, a subsidiary of the Scholastic Shooting Sports Foundation, is hosting nationals again at the CMP Talladega Marksmanship Park in Talladega, Alabama, March 10-12.
“Once a year all the colleges come down and compete in Alabama,” senior Zac Ailes said. “That’s where the team really earns our keep at the college. We get to say, ‘We beat the United States Military Academy at West Point and Texas A&M.’”
The competition consists of four different stages, with different configurations of five steel plates downrange. Variations include setups like “Focus” which involves shooting from right to left at a decreasing distance from 48 to 24 feet from the firing line.
“It takes a lot of precision,” freshman Joseph Grohs said. “Especially these particular stages, they’re very short. If you miss once, your time is no longer competitive. You can make it up a little bit, you can get a little lucky, but having good, delivered shots on each target is what’s going to win you a match.”
The John Anthony Halter Shooting Sports Education Center’s partnership with Springfield Armory provided the team with 9mm 1911 pistols. The past few weeks have been focused on sighting in any final errors by running imaginary matches, and determining which athletes will be on the top competing team.
“They make you pick your A, B, and C team before you go down there,” Ailes said. “Everybody’s been gunning pretty hard for those four spots on that A-Team. That’s the best chance we’ll get at winning a gold medal equivalent in college. You’re there with the other three best people.”
Despite all three teams competing, many team members say they have fought hard to gain a position on the A-team. A good time is considered shooting five targets in 2.5 seconds, with quarters of a second determining who makes the cut. All shooters have attended practice for months, three times per week, in rain, ice, and snow.
“The competition has really been truncated in that everybody has a very similar set of skills, with a quarter-second timing difference between people,” Ailes said. “Coach Adam went with other considerations, like consistency and people who’ve been to Nationals before. People will sometimes shoot poorly when the pressure’s on, who’ve never been there before.”
The action shooting team has a variety of members, with some shooting for the first time at Hillsdale, and others being military veterans.
At the end of the practice on March 6, it was announced that Ailes, Greg Clement, Zechariah Steiger, and Will Galstererwill be competing for the A-Team.
“Our A squad has a very good shot at taking it,” Grohs said. “It’s like track. It’s a very mental game.”
While the B and C teams could also win in their respective categories, the athletes guess that Team A has the strongest chance at winning first.
“I’m very blessed that I get to work with these guys,” assistant coach Michael “Doc” Sweeney said. “I haven’t prepared them, they’ve prepared themselves.”
