Last semester, The Roundup met with Madeline Maggard, a Jesuit Spanish teacher and head coach of the competitive shooting team.
The shooting team teaches Jesuit students how to handle, shoot, and take care of guns (primarily shotguns and pistols). The team played their best during the annual Christmas Spectacular Skeet Tournament, in which two Jesuit students in the Varsity/Senior level placed top 10 (Palmer Bowman ’23 and Drake Clark ’23), while Winn Moore ’25 finished 1st in the Senior/JV level. Here’s what Mrs. Maggard had to say about the shooting team.
How has this season been so far?
“It’s been a little slow to start, our first tournament will be a trap tournament.”
What is a trap tournament?
Mrs. Maggard responded to this question with: “We shoot traps, there are ski traps, sporting clays for shotgun traps. It’s more how the clays are thrown and they come out of a bunker house and there are five stations across the field. Five people that shoot at targets flying at the same speed and the same height. However, the pieces fly at different angles, making it more difficult for the people to hit them. In anticipation of the upcoming tournament, Mrs. Maggard said that she “can tell you more about how the seasons going after this weekend.”
And when was that first meet?
“The first meet was in September. It was the North Texas Juniors opening and just, we sort of use it as our kickoff to the season, but it’s not a league shoot. It’s a registered shoot, but it’s not one with all local teams within our league.”
Afterward, Mrs. Maggard went on to say that the team has grown. “The first thing I think about this year is how is it going to impact our numbers. Having 59 kids or 58 kids on the roster this year versus just over 40 last year.”
“We added almost 20 or more than 20 freshmen, or close to that and some of those were kids who were choosing to just shoot pistols and rifles, and some kids who were choosing to shoot just a shotgun. And then we had some kids who were on the team last year, shooting a shotgun, who have decided to join the pistol and rifle team as second-team options.”
So those are the two categories of guns, pistols, and shotguns?
“They shoot only rimfire pistols when the guys start, which is 22 LR. It’s not a centerfire round. They can graduate to centerfire pistols when they’re proficient enough. They can also first-year shoot 22 rimfire rifles.”
“We use Ruger 1022s for that. Most of the guys shoot Ruger 22, mark four 2245. Some of them have Browning buck marks for their room, for our pistols. And then there are a plethora of shotguns. As long as they’re not a pump shotgun, as long as it’s not a pump shotgun, you can shoot traps with a pump shotgun.”
“But most of the guys, if they join the team with a pump shotgun on the Christmas list, You can’t do skeet with a pump shotgun and you can’t do sporting clays with it either, so it’s pretty limiting.”
And do all the guys own their guns, or do you provide any guns?
“We, the school have not purchased any. All the guns that are available to the guys are ones that either I or one of the other coaches owns, if they come to the team, not having yet purchased one. So as you can imagine, we’ve got a wide array of knowledge and skills. We have some guys who’ve grown up hunting, with a grandad or dad.”
“And so they have some field experience. Some guys come having shot some trappers skied or sporting clays. Some have plinked around with pistols and rifles again with granddad or whatever so if they want to join the team, we don’t insist that to take the class and join the team, they have a firearm of their own, but that they joined with the understanding that very soon, like maybe by Christmas time, they need to have decided what they want to purchase.”
“So all the coaches collectively have, you know, several different types of shotguns to let them try out the same thing with pistols so that they can have a, get a feel for what’s out there and it’s kind of like test driving a car, I guess, you know, you don’t want to purchase it. You don’t want to purchase something unless you try it out.”
I’m sure it’s like many things, but in your opinion, what’s the biggest reason that there are a lot more kids this year on the team than before?
“I would love for you to do a survey and ask the guys this question, but I think one of the reasons is that there is a setting aside politics because I’m not clear that politics has been a real push.”
“I think that as our students have learned that we have a team, I think it taps into some of the things we were just talking about, that they have experiences with granddads and dads and moms because it’s, you know, a sport that transcends gender transcends, generations so I think there’s a desire to do these activities because they’re also things that people can do again in as a family. And I think that is a real pool. Even at the open house this weekend, some families stopped by our table and said, they thought this was awesome that Jesuit had a team because it is something that allows the guys to practice their skills for when they want to go hunting.”
“If that’s a thing they like to do, it’s multi-generation. And it’s something that can go on forever, meaning you may not always be able to get out there and play rugby and football because our bodies just can’t handle it, but you can shoot way as long as your eyes and your you maintain safe, you know, as long as your eyes are decent, you can do that as a family.”
“You know all the time. Yeah, I think that’s probably the reason.”
I was wondering what the difference between pistols and rifles and shotguns is on the team and also your personal preferences?
“Well, when it comes to personal preference, I’m definitely a pistol girl. When some of the guys approached me in 2016, they talked about wanting to start up a shooting team, so that’s what we did.
One of them was a shotgun guy. One was a pistol guy and we just decided that we would start. I said I can’t do both all at once. So we decided to pick something and we started with a shotgun, then it got bigger and we added the pistol to our arsenal. I’m super excited about the pistol because it’s what I got into.”
You were talking about how the sport isn’t limited to a specific gender when you compete, do you compete in a strictly male, or strictly female event, or is it all coed?
“The guys compete in both and to be honest with you, being the slightly competitive female athlete that I am, I really want to push, especially for the shooting sports, for it to be not about gender because it doesn’t matter whether you’re a guy or girl you can excel in the sport.
So it’s wonderful in that respect, because currently in any tournament or any match that the guys participate there are no gender barriers. There is an overall athlete award that’s given, but then there’s also a breakdown for the females and that’s to incentivize the females to join and compete. I always vote that we should do away with the female part of it because the feminist in me wants to be equal to the guys, which is why I am for creating a separate category.
So I have made it very clear that I am all in favor of doing away with that. But currently, when we look at the team standings at any tournament or state it’s genderless, there isn’t a separate award for let’s compare the girls on one team to the girls on another team. It’s just who are the top five shooters.”
Do you have any girls from Ursuline on the team or do you plan to?
“That is a loaded question. There is a definite interest, but it hasn’t really started up yet. But there has been an interest every single year since the team started. I have had a few people reach out to me from Ursuline and express an interest in joining our shooting team.
Some of them have brothers that go here and some don’t but they know that we have a team and they would like to join. Currently, the status is that I have enough on my plate and Jesuit wants me to focus on Jesuit guys and be sure that you guys have a place in tournaments. If Ursuline can find a duplicate of me, someone who’s willing to be the sponsor, then it would be a lot easier.
Now Ms. Glen and I are both Ursuline graduates interestingly enough. She is willing to and she’s also helped do coaching for the team and her boys both graduated from here. She and I are willing to mentor that as Ursuline graduates to bring the team along. So we keep trying, but we haven’t found the person at Ursuline yet who is willing to do the paperwork and all of the organizational stuff that’s required, but we’ve been willing to let them practice with us if they can find that person. So not yet.”
Is there anybody on the team that you’d like to shout out for excelling or just demonstrating any forms of leadership?
“Oh gosh. Yes. Chris Staffon is one of the young men that I think that has really shown some leadership. He was new to the sport, for the most part I think, and shot the first 25 straight last year for a trap. So I think he realized, wow, I’m actually pretty good at this. Palmer Bowman’s another young man who’s done very well. He’s also shot 25 straight.”
Drake Clark is pretty good too alongside Conner Harrington. Let me shout out to the young guys too, I think an up-and-coming lookout underclassman would be Winn Moore. I would also say another really strong one who joined late is Mansur and Hope. Jack Kubelka did a great job at practice yesterday.”
How does the team practice?
“We have because of the logistics of, and Jesuit’s rule about not traveling with firearms, and we obviously can’t have firearms on campus.
It makes it difficult to have practices during the week. So our practices typically are on the weekends either Saturdays or Sundays about twice a month. The practice that is about an hour away from Dallas. We practice at Terrell Rifle and Pistol Club and Texas Gun Ranch for skeet trap and sporting clays. When Elm Fork Shooting Sports is closed to the public, we are given a couple of hours to practice before the time changes, which is very convenient for everybody.
For pistol and rifle we practice at Dallas Pistol Club, which is near Belt Line and Luna Road in Carrollton, so that’s nice and close.”
So you made that distinction between, pistol and rifle and shotgun for practice. Is there a specific coach that goes to a specific site?
“Yes. Safety is number one and the league requires that for every five shooters that we have one coach and one range safety officer. Every athlete on the team has to have one parent take a range safety officer course and participate in a sort of rotating ideas or rotating bases to help keep everybody safe. It’s even more important that we have the right numbers of pistols because it is much easier to screw up with a pistol than it is with a shotgun. So I have five pistol coaches altogether, including myself. And then for the shotgun, I’ve got four shotgun coaches.”
“So yes, when we do pistol, we have sort of stations. I guess we work on different skills at three or four different stations, depending upon how many people are coming. And we will rotate between a couple of pistol exercises and then we’ll have a station that’s for rifle, so the guys get a chance to practice a little bit with the 22 rifles.”
“And then we do a similar thing when we’re doing shotgun. We’re usually trying to focus on one discipline per practice. So this past weekend, we were practicing trap because the weekend’s tournament is a trap tournament. So we have two fields, two different coaches, two different ROS working on trap skills.”
What are your goals for the team this year?
“We don’t have to have a qualifying score like a lot of clubs or sports do, meaning you don’t have to have a certain score to be able to go to state or to nationals.
I’m sure that will change eventually, but for right now, they are wanting anybody who wants to be able to go and who can make the trip to go. This is our fifth year. I’ve kind of had these ideas of going to nationals. I’ve made that very clear at the beginning, that I really wanted to make that trip to Marengo, Ohio in July.
Really the competitive part of me wants to represent and have a group of guys go. That’s my personal goal for the whole team collectively is to make that trip for the experience.
Last year, we placed as a team, fifth in trap at the state tournament. I would love to see us get fourth or fifth as a team over all the disciplines. The key is to just make little incremental steps. Consistency is what we’re really working on in order to do that. You have to shoot in the nineties for every single discipline.
And we’re in the nineties, occasionally with some of the disciplines by a shooter, but we need to be as more consistently, of course, shooting in the nineties, trap skeet, and sporting clays. The guys that I mentioned, no pressure on them. They need it. They need to be shooting in the nineties consistently in order for us to be able to come home and add some trophies to the case there. We’ve placed third and fourth in tournaments, but when you’ve got Allen and Southlake, they may be really huge teams.“
How do you handle the collecting of the ammo that you use and the expense of it?
“So generally speaking, the athlete, well, actually the parent, you know, legally, the parent is the one purchasing the ammo. Athletes are responsible for purchasing their own ammo and their own firearms.
I have opportunities through the programs so the leagues that we belong to, to purchase ammunition and bulk. I do purchase ammunition in bulk and then provide the opportunity to purchase it for it’s usually a slightly discounted price as well. The whole purpose of it, of course, through CCI or Remington or any of the ammunition manufacturers is to give youth a chance to shoot, even in the pandemic with all of the ammo shortage there’s been, they have somehow managed to be able to give me an opportunity to buy a hundred flats of shotgun ammo, or five cases of rimfire ammo, and I do it so, thankfully.”
Do you have a certain amount that they need to bring to practice and then a certain amount that they need to bring to tournaments?
“Correct. So we can calculate and make a projection. So generally speaking for any tournament, if you’re shooting a hundred of something, you need to bring five boxes of shotshell ammo, that’s 125 rounds of shotshell ammo. There’s the target they’re trying to get in the middle so there’s a calculation. It’s about 150 to 200 rounds is the suggested amount to bring to a match.
You’re going to use less than that. Most practices will go through about three boxes and that average is about $7. So a flat right now of ammo for a shotgun is about $70. So it’s a couple of thousand dollars to buy ammo yearly, especially on the shotgun team because if you look at all the costs and everything, the tournaments and that kind of stuff.”
Thanks to Mrs. Maggard for the interview! Stay tuned for more Shooting Team news and tournaments!
