Shooting Trap
at the World Championships

By Collin Wietfeldt,
NRA Youth Shooting Sports Ambassador

Competing in the World Championships was one of the proudest moments of my life so far. Recently I earned a spot on the 2009 World Championship Clay Target Team. The USA Junior Trap team was composed of Jake Turner, Seth Politi and myself. The experience of going to a different country is an experience in itself, but to shoot in a World Championship makes the trip a thousand times better. The World Clay Target Championships took place in Maribor, Slovenia. The country is on the north border of Croatia and the south border of Austria. There were over 70 countries represented and around 600 shooters taking part in this competition. The travel involved in going to an overseas country is very time consuming. From leaving my front door to getting into our hotel in Slovenia, the trip took over 25 hours. The first couple of days overseas, we trained and got acclimated to the time change. We were able to do a little sightseeing, buy some souvenirs and eat at a couple of cool little restaurants. The style of food in Slovenia is Italian and Mediterranean. They had a lot of seafood and Italian dishes. We tried many dishes such as brick oven pizza, pastas, calamari, lamb, roe buck and other authentic foods. It is also a very scenic country that has a lot of beautiful architecture.

The first day of competition was exciting, intense and a whole lot of fun. My fellow teammate, Jake Turner, was tied for first with a 73/75 and I was tied for third with a 72/75. We both did not know where we were sitting in the competition after the first day because we did not want to look at the scores. Our coach told us we were both fine, so it made us feel relieved. Having to wait until the next day to shoot the last two rounds was nervewracking, and it was very hard to sleep the night before. Shooting against all the other countries is so much fun, and it's interesting to see how you match up. The next day of competition was filled with excitement. Jacob and I finished out with the same score of 119/125. This tied us for fifth with two other competitors. Jacob finished eighth and I finished seventh in my overseas match. Seth finished respectively in the top 50 in the world. The scores that all three of us shot as a team won silver, with a combined total of 347. The other individual and team highlights were from the USA Men's Skeet team, con-sisting of Vincent Hancock, Frank Thompson and Shawn Dulohery, who won gold with a 366—setting a new world record. Vincent Hancock went on to win gold individually, with a 124/125 and a 25 in the final. The Junior Women's skeet team consisted of Amber English, Ali Chang and Caitlin Connor, who won gold in the team event with a 204—which is a new junior world record. Amber English went on to win silver in the junior individual awards with a 71/75. The Junior Men's skeet team that consisted of John Michael McGrath, Chris Haver and B.J. Blanchard won silver with a 349. The Men's Double Trap team of Glen Eller, Josh Richmond and Jeff Holguin won gold and set a new world record with a 430. Jeffery Holguin went on to win an individual silver, with a 144/150 (with a 42 in the final and +2 targets “sudden death” shootout to win). The Junior Double Trap team of Derek Halderman, Billy T. Crawford and Bryce Gearhart won silver with a 407.

I have to say that competing overseas is as good as it can get. To me, there is no other feeling in the world that equals this. To be able to represent your country on the world's stage and have USA on your vest is the best feeling you can ever have.