Wichita Clay Dusters Kick Off Their Fall Trap Season
Last night, The Wichita Clay Dusters kicked off their Scholastic Clay Target Program (SCTP) Fall season at Michael Murphy & Sons! This is the second season for the team. This team was established in an effort to give more youth the opportunity to participate in shooting sports that do not have a team at their school. More specifically, this team was put together to welcome kids and coaches from racially diverse backgrounds. We partnered up with a handful local coaches, Pastor Bill Van, Boris Fernandez, Ford Carr, Kenny McCoy, Roosevelt Deshazer, Shannon Selstedt, Mike Christensen, and Brittany French in which many of them are from diverse backgrounds themselves. We leaned on our coaches to recruit young athletes to our team by sharing our open registration in urban churches, schools, and amongst their family and friend group. We are expecting our team to be made up of 30 athletes this season ranging from 8 years of age to 18 years of age.
Most of these young shooting sports athletes have never shot a firearm before. The SCTP Program has a great training program that all coaches must go through in order to feel confident and capable to coach these new athletes on taking their first shot. As you can imagine, this is a big moment of a new shooting sports athlete! Before any athlete takes their first shot, we go through the process of figuring out each athletes dominate hand and eye dominance. We have many athletes on our team who are right hand dominant and left eye dominate! That creates for a unique coaching opportunity that will allow these athletes to become the best shooter they can be! Our practices are full of supportive parents spectating and cheering on their children. These practices create a great moment for us to take a step back and appreciate the future of shooting sports. These youth all have a chance to compete on a trap team because someone reached out and invited them. What a great lesson we can all learn from! The next time you head to the field or shooting range, think about who you can invite, that does not look like you to go along with you.
Last night, our athletes were able to unbox and use their new Stevens Shotguns donated to our team by Savage Arms! These shotguns were put to good use as many of our kids used them to take their first shots. The lightweight over-under shotgun was a big crowd pleaser. Most of our returning athletes are used to shooting a semi-automatic shotgun. Trying out these Stevens 555 Shotguns provided us the opportunity to teach our athletes about a break action shotgun, different choke sizes, and how to properly load and unload. We are really looking forward to how this season goes!
If you have a youth who is interested in learning how to shoot trap, please give us a call! You can contact coach, Brittany French at bfrench@outdoormentors.org to find out more about our Wichita Clay Dusters Team!
