One of the fastest growing outdoor sports in Iowa at almost any level is sport shooting.
Competitive club, high school and college teams are available across the state.
It's a technical sport requiring individual skill and ability and it's a way for some
athletes who might not otherwise participate in organized sports to compete and to shine.
Shooting ranges all across the state are busier than ever, the popping sound of shotguns peppering
the air on an almost daily basis.
Iowans of all ages enjoy shooting sports like trap and skeet, but more and more high school
and college teams are giving young athletes a chance to compete at a high level.
We're growing mature people and responsible people, at the same time helping to give them
an education that's going to feed them the rest of their life and then along the way
if we can go and get a couple of kids going with an Olympic dream then that's just awesome
for me.
That's what makes it exciting.
Coach Mundy started a new shooting sports program at Grandview University in Des Moines
a year ago.
Four years before that, he started a team at Southwestern Community College in Creston,
the first varsity collegiate team in Iowa.
Both programs offer scholarships to shooters and Mundy recruits athletes to campus to participate.
I've got a young man that finished in the top ten at nationals last year and a young
lady that finished around top twenty.
So you can bring in some of these higher level athletes with a little bit of scholarship
and the program that we're running here at Grandview.
Actually that is the reason I came here.
I was originally going to go somewhere else but Charlie contacted me and asked me if I
was interested in shooting in college and I told him yeah.
So I came and visited and I liked it so I came here.
Don't shoot it on the way by.
Saddle up.
Pull!
There you go.
It has been an exciting three or four years for me to watch this thing grow and watch
all these community colleges come on board and now university.
So yeah, it's absolutely a way to attract students, but students that might not have
otherwise even gone to college.
So it has just been a good thing I think in my opinion and it kind of opens the doors
and opens the eyes of some young people.
I had retired from Blackhawk County Sheriff's Office and I was working at Hawkeye Community
College running their law enforcement program and it came up about the numbers of sport
shooters in the state of Iowa and they did some research, they realized the potential
out there for the number of kids and potential recruitment and they knew my background and
asked if I would be interested in coaching at the college level.
Three years ago, Coach Boldt helped start a club team at Hawkeye Community College in
Waterloo.
Now, it has turned into a varsity collegiate sport at Hawkeye involving scholarships and
recruiting.
It's still a club sport at Simpson College in Indianola, but the college did hire a full-time
coach in 2016, despite intense opposition from some alumni and supporters about the
position and even the existence of a shooting sports program on campus.
They were willing to say, this can be educational and this is good and a lot of kids doing it
and we'll do it right.
So I'm really grateful that they took that stance.
You're kind of leaning over.
I don't want you to lean over, I want you to lean forward.
Okay?
You got it.
Trap shooting and skeet shooting are slightly different, but both involve shooting a clay
target or clay pigeon thrown from a dugout.
Trap shooting is the most common competition right now.
You get 25 shots is considered a round and you're trying to break a target that is flying
out away from you and it is put at a random angle so you don't know what kind of, you
call for the target but you don't know what you're getting, and so there's the challenge
in it and it's a pretty simple game really.
I've had some real good luck with the kids and I relate some of that stuff to the video
games they play, with all the different movements of their eyes and seeing different things
here and there on the screen I think it's easier for some of them to see the moving
target.
And then it's just a matter of getting the technique down so they can get on the bird.
Very challenging.
It's a huge mental game.
You can get all of the physical stuff down, the mechanical stuff and if you have a, if
you're off one day mentally you're going to struggle.
It's hard, it's very competitive, there's a lot of people that are really good at it
so to be the best is really hard.
So that's what is fun for me and it's also an individual and team sport.
You kind of were backing up on that target, stay engaged, attack it.
Pull!
Atta girl.
Nice shot.
Good job.
Good flow.
Pull!
There you go.
That looked better.
Despite an assumption that it would be a dangerous sport, especially for youth, it is actually
incredibly safe and the focus on safety is front and center.
It is practiced every day and it's just, it's second nature, it's natural and the kids know
that if there's any violation they can be off the team instantly.
A lot of people that don't understand, they just need to come and watch it and you can
actually kind of feel the safety aspect of what we're doing.
The Iowa DNR helps administer shooting sports in the state.
Participation has grown from about 400 athletes in 2007 to about 3,700 athletes in 2017.
Growth in shooting sports has been so big that it's hard for some teams to find enough
coaches and open practice facilities to accommodate everyone interested.
These kids want to continue shooting when they go onto college because it's their passion
and they love it.
And the nice thing is, at the end of the day it isn't about how fast you are or how tall
I am to play basketball or how well I can spike the ball, it's just a matter of whether
I can go out there and listen to my coach and break a target and be safe and have fun
doing it.
It's enjoyable.
I like it, I really like being outdoors and getting with people and shooting.
I think it's a really fun activity or sport.
It would be great to end up getting as far as I can in the sport, if that would end up
being Olympics or somewhere else, but I'm excited to be here and improve.
It's something that can last a lifetime.
People up to like 90 years old are shooting out there.
So you can do it.
It's a lifelong sport.
Shooting sports are equalizers.
Males, females, young, old, big, small, people with disabilities, they all can compete.
It teaches you a lot and it makes you grow as a person because you learn about yourself
and you push yourself because it's kind of a self-sport.
You just push to get your score better and better each time.
I get to see these kids have fun and I get to see their lives change and families change
and that’s what is at the heart of what we're doing with this sport.