Max Hatfield, a Wadsworth High School senior, auditioned for the 2024 Paris Olympics this past summer for trap shooting, and is currently practicing for part two of the Olympic tryouts.
“I started shooting international bunker [trap shooting] about four or five years ago,” Hatfield said. “It carried me to three SCTP [Scholastic Clay Target Program] National Championships and then this past summer I went to part one of [the] Olympic Selection for Paris 2024.”
Olympic shooting sports, including trap, have been in all but two Summer Olympic Games since 1896, according to the Olympics. The United States has won a total of 57 gold medals in shooting sports since it began.
“You shoot little orange discs that are about the size of your fist and you stand about 15 yards away from where they’re thrown out,” Hatfield said. “They’re thrown out of the automatic traps [where] the targets are moving anywhere from 60 to 100 miles an hour. They can go in any direction, so you never really know where a target’s going. It’s all reaction off instinct. If you look at when I call for the target and when I pull the trigger it’s less than half a second.”
The player must shoot, and hit, the moving ball to score points. The teams consist of five individual shooters and they rotate until all of them have shot 25 times.
“I’m training [in] various disciplines, five to six days a week after school,” Hatfield said. “With the break of football [season], I am able to do it a lot more than I was.”
Hatfield goes to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Hillsdale, Michigan multiple times a week to train in trap shooting.
“I shot really well [in part one of Olympic Selection],” Hatfield said. “I’m sitting in the top ten, I need to make [the] top six in order to go to France with the men’s team. Part two of Olympic Selection is in March so right now I’m really preparing for that.”
