The club sport of trap shooting is on its third and final year at Buena Vista University due to lack of funding as well as numbers.
“The clay target shooting will continue through this year. They’ll have their regular season and competition but at the end of the 24-25 academic year we are going to stop supporting it as a club sport that it is right now and not pay for the coach to work with the students,” said Dr. Heidi Manning, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs.
Head Coach Luke Zalaznik concurred that this was how the question of the team unfolded. “I got a phone call, and they said the program’s done, kind of out of the blue for me. I didn’t expect it,” said Zalaznik.
On Monday, September 2 Zalaznik told the clay target team the news.
“It’s sad to see the program just getting shut down because I’ve put in a lot of work towards it and a lot of money. Like the whole blood sweat and tears thing I’ve put that into the sport and it’s really sad to see it go,” said senior clay target shooter Luke Hatchitt.
Digital media major Blake Robinson produced a multimedia piece about Luke Hatchitt and his passion for the sport.
There was a meeting hosted on Tuesday, September 10 to discuss options for the clay target team in the future. “I think the students went into the meeting thinking it was their chance to make a last ditch effort to change the mind of the university but the decision had already been made. And so it was more a chance to hear the students’ concern and to talk with them about options going forward and how we might be able to support them in their activity or whatever options there are,” said Manning.
Other options discussed were competing as an individual or registering as a student organization.
“They’re pushing us to be a club which means everything from guns to shells to entry fees for meets traveling wise is all personal funded. The people after me are going to try see if they get funding from the school as other clubs will do, but right now it’s not looking too good so it’s all going to be personally funded,” said Hatchitt.
Despite these circumstances the students continue to work hard and hope to make it to Nationals. “They’re doing very well. We’re having a really good year. As a team we’ve done second place the last two meets we’ve been at. We’ve had a lot of personal bests. We’ve had high overall champions. We’ve done really well,” said Zalaznik.
The students will continue to work hard during the time they have remaining. With their fall season all ready wrapped up as of November 3. “Once we found out at the beginning of the season that our season no longer is going to be a thing after this year, we kind of have a motto of something to prove. Prove it to them that they should not be taking the program away. We’ve been doing really good every meet we’ve been to,” said Hatchitt.
According to team members the Buena Vista clay target team plans to go out with a bang.
