The sun casts a warm early morning glow over the Grand Prairie Gun Club. The Coppell Competitive Shooting Team greets each other with friendly “good mornings” as they prepare their shotguns for practice and share breakfast burritos.

They all gather around as coach Josef Babilon goes through a safety protocol, a routine procedure the team does before every practice.

“Make sure your muzzle is in a safe direction, make sure your safety is on and make sure you’re wearing eye and ear protection – simple things like that,” said Coppell High School junior Hayden Lipsey, shooting team student board president. “If we follow these rules, there’s quite literally no possible way for anybody to get through.”

The team, established in 2011, has 31 members, consisting of students as young as middle school students to seniors. They compete in three types of competitions: trap, skeet and sporting clays.

In trap shooting, clay pigeons fly away from the shooter and shooters fire at the clays in different positions. In skeet shooting, clays cross from opposite directions and each shooter takes five targets from five shooting positions. In sporting clays, shooters go through a course with different stations where clays are either fired straight up into the air or on the ground.

“A lot of the time it’s 70% failure, 30% success, there’s always more you can learn,” said junior Ethan Steffens, shooting student board vice president. “I have learned that different targets come at different speeds so you have to shoot different distances in front of the targets or behind them. There’s a lot of actual thinking that goes into it so it’s made me sharper mentally and definitely helped with my patience.”

In the 2023-24 season, CCST placed at every tournament it competed in within the region. Last year in state, it placed 10th with HOA champion, first in skeet doubles, second in skeet and third in trap. The team started off this season strong with a fifth place finish at its first meet of the year.

“You don’t have this segregation of ‘These are the top athletes, these are not good athletes,’” Babilon said. “It’s a very tight community where everybody plays a part.”

The community has built a sense of belonging among the members. The team bonds through various fundraisers, competitions and early morning practices. Through shooting, members of the team have learned how to better understand themselves, stay focused and have patience.

“It’s a really welcoming community and I know it may not seem like it because of guns, but it is really like a family,” said senior Naida Paschal, shooting student board secretary. “You find people that are interested in the same things as you that you wouldn’t expect to.”

Last year, the team placed third in the Trap Season Opener in Fort Worth. This was the team’s biggest win for the 2023-24 season.

“It was awesome because we didn’t really have a lot of time to practice trap,” Babilon said. “We just went out there and threw our hat in the ring and we ended up doing excellent. The kids just came out of nowhere, it was so fun to watch.”

Babilon encourages anyone who may be interested in the team to try out shooting. Being a part of the team allows students to learn about guns and shooting in a structured and safe environment.

“If anybody doesn’t know anything about shotguns or is just a little bit nervous, just come check it out,” Babilon said. “If you do want to dip your toe in the water, I don’t know that there is a safer, better environment to be around. Everybody is just going to welcome you with both arms.”

This story was originally published on Coppell Student Media on November 12, 2024.