Trap and Skeet Takes Fourth at International Championship

Junior Tia Pawlowski takes aim at a 2017 competition.

By Morgan Consier

In his first year as Head Shooting Sports Coach, Scott Moniot has learned with the team as they have grown accustomed to having 33 team members, as opposed to the 14 team members from the 2017-18 season.

Through these changes, the team has gained some major accomplishments including coming in fourth place at the 2019 Association of College Unions International Clay Target Championship in San Antonio, Texas.

This finish was an improvement from last year’s 10th place finish, which reflects the amount of work both Moniot and the team have put in over this school year.

“It has been a very stretching experience,” Moniot said in an email interview. “This first season has been filled with many logistical challenges, from a team of 14 to 33, but overall it has been very rewarding getting the opportunity to grow a great program here at Concordia University.”

Moniot said that the additional 19 team members created a new team dynamic that everyone, including returning athletes, had to get used to.

In addition to increasing the team’s size, this season was the team’s first as a varsity team instead of as a club team.

Moniot said all the team members have worked together to get the team to where it is now.

“It took effort on everyone’s part to adjust to all these changes and build unity,” Moniot said. “All of the hard work and effort that everybody put forth this season has already paid big dividends for our team as a whole.”

The team also garnered third place finishes in Division II Trap and International Trap events and had several individuals perform well in San Antonio. In International Shoot Out Women’s Skeet, senior Erin Lokke took silver and sophomore Emma Van Donselaar took bronze. Both Lokke and Van Donselaar made it on the ACUI/USA Shooting  All-Collegiate Team, a team consisting of only the top three finishers in the championship.

On the men’s side, sophomore Wyatt Eriksen took third place in the 2019 ACUI Men’s International Trap Open Championship.

At the ACUI Collegiate Western International, Concordia swept the podium in Women’s International Skeet and repeated that same feat at the 2019 Western Super Shoot in Tucson, Arizona.

In Tucson, freshman Damien Steward won the College Men’s Combined American Events, hitting 196 of the 200 total targets.

Lokke is currently in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates with Team USA attempting to reach the Minimum Qualifying Score and to finish in one of the top two spots in the Women’s International Skeet in order to qualify for competing on the USA Shooting Team in the next Olympics.