Pistol Collegiate Pistol Shooting and Programs BY 2012 OLYMPIAN NICK MOWRER IN OUR SOCIETY, the ultimate recreational
sport of shooting continues to shape our youth. In this country the shooting sports are alive and surprisingly becoming more popular. Nowhere is it more apparent than at the col- legiate level. I have been involved in collegiate shooting since 2008, and have witnessed the sport grow in that time. That too is not surpris- ing considering the availability of funding and self-motivated folks working hard to promote the shooting sports. As a self-motivated youth of society,
I
found myself looking for a sport I could not only have fun participating in but also learn from as well. I found that shooting is AWE- SOME! Somehow it never occurred to me that I could shoot competitively while enrolled fulltime, but thankfully that idealist view soon subsided thanks to the National Rifl e Asso- ciation (NRA). The NRA conducts the club shooting sports such as the Intercollegiate Pistol Championships as well as the Intercol- legiate Rifl e Club Championships.
had never had a gun enthusiast ask about starting a target shooting club. I made this inquiry and it lead me to start up a competi- tive shooting club at my university that is still active today. Most four-year colleges across the nation
One important thing I learned is that if you
are motivated to push beyond society’s mir- rored doors, there is a way to compete col- legiately in the shooting sports. It begins by inquiring at your school how to start a target shooting club. In my case, I was attending a mining/engineering university. This school
have a variety of clubs that are run and main- tained by the student body collaboration. If your school of choice does not already have a shooting club, it would seem ideal to start that club yourself! If starting a club is not pos- sible, in the case you are attending a com- munity college with no athletic program, you can still be a part of collegiate shooting. The downside is that you will have no funding without the support of that club or college. Starting a shooting club at your college can be a controversial topic as it was with my university. Due to the controversial tenden- cies of the topic, I had to have a meeting with the vice president of my university. This was a meeting to authorize my intentional use of the club, a topic laid to rest once they under-