A Letter From The President
Dear USA Clay Target League friends,
I sincerely hope this message finds you and your loved ones healthy.
Thirteen years ago, I sat at a kitchen table with the League’s founder, Jim Sable, to explore the idea of starting a school-sponsored clay target activity for kids. As you can imagine, we discovered the many challenges when mentioning a program that contains “kids, guns, and schools” to prospective athletic directors, principals, superintendents and school boards. We knew we were going to be in for an extraordinary challenge, but we prevailed.
For the first eight years of the League’s existence, Jim, his wife Sharon, and I worked out of our home offices. As the League expanded at unprecedented levels in the past five years, so did the resources required that makes this League what it is. Two dozen faithful and talented League staff members, hundreds of donors and sponsors, nearly 1,000 shooting range leadership teams, more than 1,500 high school leaders, nearly 10,000 devoted coaches and volunteers, and over 32,000 enthusiastic clay target shooting sport students and their family members.
Thanks to the tremendous clockwork efforts of all of these stakeholders that believe in the League’s mission, the USA Clay Target League is the safest and one of the fastest-growing high school sports in America.
But today, I am back at working out of my home office again for an entirely different and unfortunate situation.
COVID-19 has had a catastrophic impact on the world’s economy, health and well-being. It is also expected to have a very substantial negative impact to the USA Clay Target League this year. But the impact will certainly not last forever.
During this ever-changing and tumultuous period our League has received hundreds of ideas and requests to explore opportunities to maximize the opportunity for teams and kids to participate in the League.
Many of these ideas were included in the Modified 2020 Spring Season that now allows teams and student athletes to conduct their event at anytime prior to June 24th. The League’s Special Offer provides registered student athletes a special limited-edition USA Clay Target League t-shirt and year’s subscription to PullUSA Magazine even if an athlete doesn’t get to shoot at a single target.
This historic health crisis has allowed the USA Clay Target League to witness something profound and inspirational about the passion of the League’s mission that is shared by its devoted congregation.
Currently the interest in the League has never been higher to create our next generation of outdoor stewards.
- 23,700 – Current rostered athletes with two weeks to go until the registration deadline (26,000 in spring 2019)
- 9,000 – Current athletes invited to roster with their teams (Over 32,000 total potential rostered athletes)
- 3,000 – Start-a-team inquires since April 2019
- 400 – Expected new skeet and trap teams (204 in 2019)
- 220 – New high schools added (180 in 2019)
- 32 – College teams were committed to spring season (0 in spring 2019)
- 5 – New state high school leagues added (5 in 2019)
- 14,000 – New Facebook “Likes” since March 2019.
As state and/or school leaders decide on the probability of school-sponsored activities this spring, many teams will not be allowed to participate this season. More disappointing, thousands of senior clay target athletes will never get another chance to be recognized by their high school for this special sport that they dearly love.
If your team or student athlete cannot participate this spring season, please strongly consider to keep your student athlete registered to take advantage of the Special Offer AND financially help the League. Donations to our non-profit organization are appreciated more than ever during these very troubled times. Please visit https://usaclaytarget2025.com
We all know we were going to be in for an extraordinary challenge. But will prevail, again.
God bless,
John Nelson
President
USA Clay Target League