By Dominic Rapposelli
Elm Staff Writer
On the heels of their first regional win in program history, Washington College Trap and Skeet traveled to San Antonio, Texas for the weekend-long National Championships from March 21-25.
The college took part in all six events at the tournament. Each team has five shooters who shoot at four groups of 25 targets each. Each event’s total would be calculated from the top five scorers from each team. They would finish overall with 2607 targets hit out of a possible 3000 across these events. The team would also place first in the Super Sporting event with a score of 440 of 500.
According to senior Jack Maher, the team’s finish was awesome, and he was ecstatic to be part of the glory. “Everyone on the team was able to post a new personal best,” Maher said, who shot his first ever 25/25 at the tournament.
According to senior Greg Carpenter preparation for the event takes a lot of muscle memory and focus. “When shooting you have to keep your mind quiet especially when you are doing well and hitting all of the targets,” sophomore Kate Opielski said.
In a long week of shooting and competing, Opielski explained that having mental fortitude is essential to individual and team success.
“Personally, [I] don’t look at my scores until after all the events are finished. Last week, I never looked at my scores until Friday night, after we finished shooting our last event,” sophomore Hartley Meyer said.
Competitors were put into classes based on performances at the conference championship. Opielski and Meyer were the only two who took home individual class medals.
Meyer shot in Class-B American Skeet and finish with a score of 91 of 100 and included a perfect round of 25 hit targets. Meyer also took an award for academic achievement for academic success by having a cumulative GPA over 3.5. Opielski took home a first-place finish in Women’s American Skeet Doubles C-Class with a score of 74/100.
This finish would earn Opielski and Meyer split honors as Shorewomen of the Week. The top five scorers for WC consisted of senior Carter Weems (535/600), junior Gage Williams (525/600), senior Sean Scott (525/600), Carpenter (506/600), and sophomore Hunter Clark (501/600). The five of them split Shoremen of the week honors as well.
Meyer said that the team made sure to ring the victory bell as soon as they arrived back on campus at 1:00 a.m. on March 28.