Take aim: Gateway forms skeet shooting team

To an untrained eye, the five Gateway students working their way around a shooting arc at the Trafford Sportsmen’s Club are simply taking aim and trying their best to target the clay pigeons shooting across their field of vision.

But Mike Buvalla, coach of the newly formed Gateway Skeet Club, is taking note of all types of small things in each student’s movement.

“Everybody’s a little different in how they shoot,” Buvalla said. “It looks the same, but I’m noticing how they all shoot and adjust a bit differently.”

After a roughly nine-month process of proposing a team to the Gateway school board and securing the necessary permissions and insurance paperwork, the team is preparing for its first meet on April 13.

Gateway is now one of three high school shooting teams that practice at the club, which began life in Trafford but is now located in North Huntingdon.

“We have two trap teams, Norwin and Penn-Trafford, and now a skeet team that shoots here,” said Dennis Gagorik, the club’s skeet commander.

The difference between trap and skeet shooting is the direction the clay pigeons are going. In trap shooting, they are fired up and away from shooters, from a trap house located directly in front of them. In skeet shooting, they emerge from two houses on either side of the shooters, in some cases crossing one another as they fly left-to-right and vice versa. In both cases, participants use a shotgun and make their way to stations around a wide curve, hoping to break every clay.

“The biggest challenge, I think, is speed and lead,” said Isaiah Gigliotti, 16, a Gateway sophomore, who joined brothers Christian and Hayden Sterner in getting the club approved by school officials. “You have to change your lead at every station.”

Both trap and skeet are traditionally meant to simulate bird hunting: Trap recreates the experience of flushing game out of the brush, and skeet mimics a low pass by a group of waterfowl.

While teams compete, they don’t actually see one another during the season. Meets take place at each team’s home club, the results are recorded and compared, organized through the Pennsylvania High School Clay Target League.

“It’s pretty much all done over a computer,” Gagorik said. “Team shooting is great because it teaches discipline, responsibility, teamwork and safety.”

Teams compete for a chance to participate in the state tournament, held in June in Elysburg.

At five members, the team is starting out small, but they’re all motivated.

“I’m excited to face off against other schools and make it more competitive,” he said.