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Tennessee Trapshooting Champ Joins Mississippi College Team


Chandler Brown

Chandler Brown’s trapshooting skills are among the best in the nation.

Recently, the 18-year-old Mississippi College freshman was chosen the top junior shooter in the state of Tennessee and named to the 2015 Amateur Trapshooting Association All-American team.

The Germantown, Tennessee resident has taken his remarkable abilities to the MC sporting clays shooting team. And that’s got school administrators fired up.

“Chandler Brown has achieved what few shooters ever do – he is ranked first in the state of Tennessee and has made the All-American team,” says Jim Turcotte, vice president for enrollment services and dean of students.

“Chandler is a standout on our sporting clay and trap team, and we expect that he will represent Mississippi College well at the San Antonio shooting (tournament) in the spring,” says Turcotte, who oversees four outdoor sports on the Clinton campus. “He’s a quiet, yet hard-working member of our team and we are very pleased to have him at MC.”

A graduate of Memphis University School in Tennessee, Chandler began trapshooting in the ninth grade as a hobby. “It quickly grew from a hobby into an obsession.”

Asked what he loves about the sport, Brown says it’s the many road trips around the country over the summer and competing, with his shotgun, against some of America’s best shooters. His stops have included Florida, Ohio and Iowa. “I love that this sport requires incredible discipline and takes lots of practice to master.”

Trapshooting is one of three major disciplines of competitive clay pigeon shooting. The others are skeet shooting and sporting clays.

Essentially, trapshooting is a game of movement, action and split-second timing, Amateur Trapshooting Association officials say. It requires accuracy and skill to repeatedly aim, fire and break a 4 ¼ inch disc tossed through the air at a speed of 42 mph. That speed simulates the flight path of a bird fleeing a hunter.

Brown honed his sharp-shooting skills as a member of the Memphis Sport Shooting Club. Being selected the No. 1 junior in the Volunteer State was exciting news for club members and his parents, Kim and Jackie Brown.

To be honored with the top junior ranking, the MC student shot 17,800 registered targets for the year ending in August in all three trap disciplines of singles, handicap and doubles.

“We feel really blessed to have him as our son and very proud of him, too,” says Jackie Brown. “He worked very hard and made many sacrifices in order to achieve these goals and has even higher goals for this year.”

All-American trapshooters at the collegiate level are a rare breed, Jackie Brown noted.

Chandler doesn’t just bring extraordinary trap shooting skills to Mississippi College. He’s determined to succeed in the classroom, too. The biology major eyes a career as a dentist.

“The main things that led me to come to Mississippi College are the excellent science programs and the sporting clays team,” Chandler Brown says.

He’s part of a sport that appeals to people as young as nine-year-olds and as old as senior citizens in their 90s. It’s a sport that’s caught on around the South, the Northeast, the West and other regions across the USA.

There’s an Amateur Trapshooting Association Hall of Fame now under construction in Vandalia, Ohio. At the moment, Mississippi College’s Chandler Brown remains on target to become a future Hall of Famer.

For more information on MC’s sporting clays shooting team, contact Jim Turcotte at turcotte@mc.edu or 601-925-3315.