Flashback Friday: Shooting Sports Outreach Program Introduction

In 2018, our President & CEO, Mike Christensen saw the USA High School Clay Target League mushrooming in size. Year after year, this program was growing across the state. With a lot of curiosity on weather or not these shooting sports athletes were hunting, Mike ran a pilot program for about 8 different teams in the greater Wichita area during the 2018 dove season. With a fantastic response, he moved forward with officially starting our Shooting Sports Outreach Program. Until this moment, there was no intentional effort to serve these shooting sports athletes. In June of 2019, he hired Brittany French on as Director of Field Operations to start the program and get it off the ground. There were a lot of unknowns at that time. Do these athletes hunt? How much do they hunt? How do we connect with the teams across the state? How do we find and manage enough mentors to support them? It was a BIG pie in the sky start to the program and we are very happy with how it has developed. Since starting the official program in 2019, we have double the number of events we have planned and engaged new teams across the state. We have even expanded into Iowa! This program works because we have passionate Program Coordinator’s brokering these new and continued hunting and fishing opportunities. These Program Coordinator’s are finding land access, arranging opportunities for shooting sports athletes to hunt together, and lining up volunteers to mentor the event from start to finish. This year, we have 3 full-time Program Coordinators working in Kansas and Iowa and they have planned over 220 events this year! They are projected to plan over 550 events by the end of 2022. We are very excited about the growth and scalability of this program. Any state with a vibrant shooting sports program, SCTP, USA Clay Target League, or 4H, can benefit from having a shooting sports outreach program as it provides the opportunity to bridge the gap between target shooting and hunting.