THE SCTP/USAS CONNECTION

Lester L. Greevy, Jr.


I was at the Grand for only two days this year. Two of the kids from the
Youth Shotgun Development Team needed work done on their guns before the
The Junior Olympics and where else can you get shotgun work during August
than at the Grand American. The gunsmithing jobs, one by Perazzi and one
by Baretta, were successful as each of the kids shot their way onto the
National Development Team at The Junior Olympic National Championships.

But the most impressive thing at the Grand this year, to my mind, was the
SCTP kids. The place was swarming with them! There were 1,062 of them,
plus parents and coaches. One out of every seven participants at the Grand
was an SCTP youth and they were all wearing their colors, their tee shirts
or vests, with the name of their home club and their home state. What
pride they showed. What fun they had.

The Scholastic Clay Target Program sponsored by the National Shooting
Sports Foundation is a super way to introduce new shooters to the sport and
to bring them along to State and National Competition. And I’m proud to
say that I was involved in the beginning of the program four years ago in
Pennsylvania. From that modest start involving only trap shooting, the
SCTP has grown to encompass 4,200 participants in trap and skeet and
sporting clays.

Dave Kaiser, President of the ATA said: “Very simply, SCTP is the future
of our sport. Never before have we seen such an influx of youth, optimism
and talent.” And that is true. Those three words – youth, optimism and
talent – and pride are the characteristics of the kids that I saw at the
Grand and they were having fun.

I have just returned from the Fall Selection Shotgun Match at the U.S.
Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs where the U.S. Olympic
Committee is engaged in its quadrennial review of the past Olympic program
and performances and the plans for 2008 in Beijing.

Bob Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer of U.S.A. Shooting has stated their
aims as follows: “It has become increasingly obvious we place increased
emphasis on developing our athlete base. We need a larger shooter pool
from which to select and train future Olympians. The necessity to develop
a larger athlete pool is unquestioned. The dilemma is resource allocation
and how much funding is to be diverted from elite programs to grassroots
and development. This will be the type of issues the Quad Review Task
Force will discuss.”

One of the obvious solutions is for the USAS to tap into that pool of youth
optimism and talent that is being created through the SCTP. And that is
already happening in a couple of ways. One way is the SCTP Junior Olympic
Development Camp at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. This
year, thirteen participants were selected from SCTP teams from across the
country to attend this five-day camp in September. Ten SCTP coaches were
also selected. Those included two kids that train with me – Sam Lutz of
Shanksville, Pennsylvania (along with his dad, Sam Lutz, Sr. as a coach)
and Jack Aldridge of Landenberg, Pennsylvania. The camp director was my
good friend, Bill Christy, who has been with the SCTP since the beginning.
Coaches include National Coach Lloyd Woodhouse and his faithful Californian
companion, National Assistant Coach, B.J. McDaniel. And I can tell you
from experience that those two gentlemen can teach an awful lot of shooting
in five days.

The next important step for SCTP is coach training. And, again, that has
already started. At the September Colorado Springs Camp the ten selected
coaches were, under the tutelage of B.J. McDaniel, introduced to coaching
and, particularly, international clay target coaching concepts in a course
very similar to the USA Shooting Certified Coaches School.

You might think that a small camp with thirteen kids and ten coaches would
not have much of an impact nationwide, but from the information I am
receiving from around the country, the ripple effect has been tremendous
and there is now unfillable demand for regional Olympic shotgun camps and
clinics, and regional coaches schools for certification and the demand is
not regionalized as it comes from all parts of the country.

One example of that would be the coaches school that I taught in Nashville,
Tennessee, at the Tennessee Clay Target Complex in September, shortly after
the USAS/SCTP Camp. The organizer and director of the school was Johnathan
Jackson, who resides near Nashville, and he did a super job of it. For a
camp in which we could only accept twelve students, he had 161 applicants
within a very short period of time. Many of these coaches were SCTP
coaches, some of whom had kids or knew other coaches who had attended the
Colorado Springs Camp. They were committed students with active programs.
They had a lot of questions.

Again, although the camp was small, the ripple effect has been tremendous
and there is increased demand for more schools around the country. One is
tentatively scheduled for the Columbus, Ohio, area (being organized by Jim
Eyster (jimeyster@ecr.net)) in January. And John Jackson
(jcjackson1968@yahoo.com) is organizing another school for Nashville in
March. Please feel free to contact either of them for more information.

Another example would be the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit’s International
Shotgun Youth Clinic in early November. Coach Dean Clark received over 300
inquiries for the clinic that had only 30 spaces. Many inquiries came from
adults looking for instruction and coaching.

The SCTP folks are not blind to this demand and they are currently in the
process of organizing and developing a curriculum for SCTP coaches with
hopes that a group of coach trainers will be ready in the spring to bring
coach school to the coaches in their home areas.

And industry is being involved with SCTP. Americase, those guys who make
the transport case to protect your shotgun from airline baggage handling
gorillas, are offering a 15% discount, free name plate and SCTP engraved on
the case to young member shooters. Magnaport is offering 50%-off on
shotgun porting. Ponsness Warren has special pricing on their reloading
equipment. And, Sig Arms has offered discounts on selected models of their
Aurora TR over-and-under shotguns.

This whole SCT Program has been a tremendous example of the cooperative
effort that can be generated by the industry and sport when all the stake
holders and the interested parties focus on the same goals. SCTP is
producing the shooters – now we at ATA and USA Shooting, and NRA, have to
cooperate to continue to develop programs to meet their needs, to keep them
interested in the sport and to help them to climb the competition ladder
both nationally and internationally.