Vegas club takes aim at nationals

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 | 9:55 a.m.

Silver State Junior Clay Breakers

Unable to find a suitable loaner shotgun in Ohio last summer, middle schooler Christian Mayfield accepted an offer from Linda Hand to try out her .12-gauge Browning Citori model.

Hand, the state director of the Scholastic Clay Target Program (SCTP), didn't believe the two would fit well, since the gun was almost as long as the boy.

"I didn't think he'd be able to lift it," Hand said. "He's small, and the gun is big. But his score immediately jumped six or seven targets. The more he used it, the better he got."

At home, during commercial breaks while he watched cartoons, Mayfield would jump off the carpet, yell "pull" as he pointed the ammo-less gun at the middle of a wall and then he'd flick the trigger the moment he had the corner where two walls met the ceiling in his cross hairs.

Then he'd execute that maneuver on the other side of the wall. He did not rejoin the cartoon until he had accomplished the feat 100 times.

"My last gun was short and light, and this one was real heavy," Mayfield said Saturday at the Las Vegas Gun Club. "I had to lift it to get my arms built up, so I could hold it longer."

Mayfield's father, Kelsie, told Hand that Christian would have taken the shotgun to bed with him if Kelsie hadn't taken it out of his hands.

That diligence paid off two weeks ago during a practice session in Elko, when 12-year-old Christian picked off 50 out of 50 targets for the first time in his young trap-shooting career.

Mayfield and his Citori might play a pivotal role for the Silver State Junior Clay Breakers next month, when they shoot for a national title at the Grand American World Trapshooting Championships in Vandalia, Ohio.

The five members of the Breakers seem to thrive on one of Hand's trap-shooting philosophies.

"When you pull the trigger and the target turns to dust, it's instant gratification," Hand said. "What can I say?"

Linda Hand adored that Citori. However, when Christian became so instantly comfortable with it, Hand knew she'd be parting ways with the weapon.

She sold it, on an installment plan, to Kelsie Mayfield for what she paid for it -- $2,200.

"Linda is great," said Terry Price, whose two children, Colton and Loralee, also compete for the Junior Clay Breakers. "She doesn't have kids, so she can put all of her time and effort into this."

Dean Pinkham and Ian Schaeffer, substituting for Dylan Mitchel, round out the sharp-shooting Junior Breakers.

"I'm excited," said 14-year-old Pinkham, who will begin attending Chaparral High in the fall and is thinking about a career as a SWAT officer. "I think we'll help each other out, and I think we'll do well."

Hand, 58, grew up in Ohio and started participating in "fun shoots" when she was 13 with her father, the late Don Jones, in San Diego. In 1991, she started shooting competitively in American Trapshooting Association events in and around Nevada.

She won the state's singles and doubles ladies' titles seven times apiece, and she was inducted into the Nevada State Trapshooting Hall of Fame in 2004.

"I try to do as much as I can to impart current knowledge to the kids, so they don't have to go through what I did," said Hand, a billing and collections supervisor for the City of Boulder City.

"I started by reading everything I could read, about what to do and what not to do. I took bits and pieces, from others, that worked for me, and my score started going up."

The SCTP focuses on safety, skill and scholastic achievement, and Terry Price wanted to emphasize that latter goal.

An A student who often hits 20 out of 25 practice targets will earn a better overall monthly score -- and a place on a more-select team -- than an F student who regularly turns a higher percentage of targets into dust.

"One thing that's overlooked is the school angle," Terry Price said. "They have to maintain grades when they're placed on teams, and they get (consideration) for how they help in fundraisers, to keep things going.

"It's all combined, with their shooting, into a final monthly score. It's an incentive for them, and I know it's helped Colton a lot. They have to buckle down and really think about things. There's a lot of discipline to it."

More than 200 colleges, including Notre Dame and Virginia, have shooting teams with scholarship considerations.

SCTP children also receive discounts on merchandise and at the shooting range, where ammunition and target expense is about $8 for a 25-clay round.

Hand's influence has boosted youth involvement in trap shooting all over the Silver State, and SCTP membership in the Las Vegas Gun Club has doubled to about 60 within the last couple of years.

The Junior Breakers became Hand's first Las Vegas-based team to win a state title, and advance to the "Grand Ams" in Ohio, during a cold and rain-soaked event June 11 in Elko.

As she shot during one round, water poured from 12-year-old Loralee Price's cowboy hat when she tilted her head.

"I'm like, 'Where'd that come from?'" she said. "My hands were frozen, too. I could barely pull the trigger."

Loralee's two Labrador puppies have since chewed that cowboy hat to pieces.

Her 14-year-old brother Colton, who will be a freshman at Centennial High and usually serves as a rudder for the team, also had a damp experience in Elko.

"When I go out there and hit the first target, I feel like I'm going to do well," Colton Price said. "There, I hit the first target every time. But it was like, I just didn't want to be there. 'Let's get it over with.'

"It was cold and miserable, and I wanted to get out."

Unlike the Prices, Christian Mayfield and his family attended the event-ending dinner, where they discovered that the team had won the state championship with a score of 814.

Loralee had just finished a walk around a hotel pool with her father, after eating a magnificent $21 filet mignon, when Christian barreled out of his father's car to announce that they had won the title.

"We didn't shoot our best, so we were just looking down," Christian said. "At the beginning, it was raining. So it was tough. We didn't think we had it."

Colton Price owed the victory to outstanding efforts by Loralee and Christian. Only when pressed did Price's father reveal that Colton was not at his physical best in Elko.

Like in Ohio next month, the Elko event consisted of 100 targets in the morning and another 100 in the afternoon for each shooter. During that last 100, Colton suffered from a pounding headache.

"When you pull your face off the gun as you pull the trigger, chances are you'll miss the target," Terry Price said. "When you have a headache like that, it's hard to keep your face on the gun when you shoot."

It might be difficult, too, to concentrate on aiming for a national title in Ohio, unless you've been there before.

Colton and Loralee Price, and Christian Mayfield, can boast of knowing what awaits them in Vandalia because they were there last year. Christian and Loralee shot as individual novices, and Colton went for kicks.

Hand said seeing that grand stage, more than 1,000 shooters spread over a 1 1/2-mile stretch of trap houses, heightened her shooters' hunger to excel in the sport.

"I had so much fun a year ago," Loralee said. "It made me work harder to hit the targets."

Those clay targets seemed to float from their launchers, as opposed to the ones at the Las Vegas Gun Club that zip out and away at a faster rate. Colton Price will remember that characteristic and trust his patience on Aug. 9.

Others might remember him.

The line of vendors almost stretched as long as the traps, and Colton, who shoots a Beretta 682, sought the Beretta company tent as soon as he arrived at the venue.

"My name is Colton Price," he told the Beretta representative, "and one day you're going to be sponsoring me."

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