“Trap is one of those unique sports where it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female,” Brian Mahoney, the Trap Shooting Club coach, said. “Women can absolutely shoot as well as men. They still separate it out and that’s more of an old-schooled thing, but there’s zero difference in the scores. In fact, I think some of the top scores at the Las Vegas conference were by women.”
The University of Idaho Trap Shooting Club placed fourth highest score overall out of ten schools that participated in the West Coast Conference Championships last weekend.
The Association of College Unions International and the Scholastic Clay Target Program hosted the championship in Las Vegas from Friday to Sunday.
Avery Stevens, a freshman studying mechanical engineering, is one of the four female members of UI’s Trap Shooting Club. She started shooting with her family when she was only 11 years old, but she quickly became the one family member who shot competitively. Although this is only her first year in the club, she managed to place third in the trap doubles for women.
“There were probably 50 men at the competition and about 11 women,” Stevens said.
Stevens placed ninth highest score overall on the women’s leaderboard.
Parker Jackson, a senior studying mechanical engineering, is president of the Trap Shooting Club. Currently in his third year on the team, he explained the various disciplines of clay target shooting.
“We compete in many different shotgun shooting sports… trap, trap doubles, skeet, skeet doubles, as well as sporting clays,” Jackson said. “Trap is just a standard: five people line up in a semi-circle and then [clay] birds will go in one general direction, and you have to try and shoot them. Trap doubles is the same concept but with two birds. In skeet, you have birds that cross in the middle and you have to try to hit them from different angles around the circle.”
Jackson, much like Stevens, grew up with his father’s interest in various types of shooting sports but his father never got into shotgun shooting until he did.
“Growing up, I shot steel silhouette, which is shooting at different silhouettes of animals at yardage markers. I shot that competition for a while and then I moved on to shooting five-stand, which is a modification of sporting clays. I did that for a while and then when I came [to UI], I joined the trap club.”
Brian Mahoney has been the faculty advisor and coach for the Trap Shooting Club since 2012. Although he took a two-year hiatus from 2021 to 2023, he says that the club has been more active than ever since his return.
“I was born into hunting and that outdoors aspect of shooting,” Mahoney said. “In 1990, I helped form a shooting sports class that spanned over a few weeks with one of my buddies. Part of that class was going out to the Troy Deary Gun Club and shooting some trap, and that was my first real introduction to that [type of shooting]. At that point, I did it to become a better bird hunter but now it’s about the comradery that forms between all the students that shoot.”
Stevens said that the community between the team members created a successful environment, which became one of her favorite parts of the championship.
“My biggest win came in the event that I had struggled with the most,” Stevens said. “By the end of the weekend, my average in skeet doubles had risen from about 40% to 80%.” She attributed this success to another member of the club who had worked with Stevens and led their squad.
The only trap and skeet field within 100 miles of the university is in Genesee, about 30 minutes south of Moscow.
“It’s rather podunk, but it works for us,” Mahoney said. “We’re pretty blessed by that.”
Most of the club’s trap shooting is done closer by, at the Troy Deary Gun Club. The club members also work at the gun club every week to help fundraise.
“We do a lot of fundraising.,” said Mahoney. “Right now, we’re finishing up a raffle. The members of the club are working at the Troy Deary Gun Club every Sunday, loading traps. It’s an expensive sport.”
Any interest in the Trap Shooting Club can be directed to the sports club webpage on UI’s Recreation and Wellbeing website.
Additional information is available at @uirecwell on Instagram.