(Editor’s Note: This is the first in a two-part series on the emergence of local youth trap shooting. Today, on how Bradford built a flourishing program in less than three years.
It started with a group of baseball dads.
Now, it’s the fastest-growing youth sport in Bradford.
The Bradford Bird Busters trap shooting team has seen exponential growth since its inception less than three years ago. And, as trap’s popularity continues to soar among McKean County youths, Bradford has asserted itself among the area’s best in the sport.
After doubling in size from one year to the next, then doubling again, Dan Brinsky’s group continues to gain notoriety — and they’re just getting started.
WHEN THE Bradford Gun Club hosted its annual Fraternal Order of Police Shoot in the fall of 2019, Bradford City Chief of Police Mike Ward invited Brinsky and several others to shoot.
They joined Bill Minich, Jamie Gray and Zach Stark — all of whom had coached Little League baseball together — and a dozen kids at the event. After seeing their children enjoy the event, the group began brainstorming on how they could become involved with youth trap.
Why not, they thought, start a team?
Interscholastic trap had already existed in the Twin Tiers. With a group of engaged kids and access to Bradford Gun Club, the move made sense to Brinsky and company.
They decided to form the Bradford Bird Busters trap club, and brought their 12 shooters to the range throughout the winter. By spring, they were admitted to the Southern Tier Scholastic Youth Trap League (STSYTL), joining four other schools from Pennsylvania and nearly two dozen in New York.
Things were looking up for local trap — Monday practices would precede Tuesday matches in the spring, and the coinciding addition of Smethport created the league’s Southern Pennsylvania Conference with Otto-Eldred, Oswayo Valley and Black Forest (Coudersport).
Like the rest of the sporting world, however, March of 2020 brought a quick halt to local competition.
“I had all my kids ready to shoot. They had put in so many days and hours,” said Brinsky, the president of Bradford Bird Busters. “Our first meet was on a Tuesday, and on that Monday, we got the phone call that everything was shut down and the meet was canceled.”
COVID-19 HAD put a stop to Bradford’s interscholastic debut before the Bird Busters even got to the line.
The STSYTL season was wiped out completely. Luckily for the Bird Busters, however, access to Bradford Gun Club allowed them to continue practicing ahead of the Pennsylvania state championships, held each year in Elysburg.
The state meet — like the STSYTL — is not regulated by the PIAA, so interscholastic competition rules don’t apply as they do in other sports. A two-day event, shooters first compete under Scholastic Clay Target Program (SCTP) rules, and then under Academics, Integrity and Marksmanship (AIM) rules.
SCTP splits competitors into collegiate, varsity, intermediate and rookie divisions, while AIM splits into junior gold, junior, sub-junior and intermediate classes. Squads can also enter an open division, which combines shooters from different classes.
Squads of five shooters compete as a team, while each athlete can compete individually, as well. The meet usually sees upward of 80 teams, equalling more than 400 shooters.
“We’re not affiliated with Bradford Area High School, so they never shut down at the (Bradford Gun Club) and our kids continued to come up and shoot,” Brinsky said. “A lot of the other schools were not allowed to shoot. We took five kids to the PA state shoot in 2020 and placed 3rd as an open squad with no expectations at all.”
Clayton Brinsky won states in his division in 2020. The Bird Busters carried their momentum into nationals, returning empty-handed but with valuable experience for a first-year program.
YEAR TWO saw Bradford’s roster size nearly double, as Dan Brinsky brought 23 athletes into the 2021 season. The Bird Busters finished 3rd in the STSYTL, behind champion Otto-Eldred and runner-up Black Forest, and their top squad returned to the state meet with a 2nd-place finish in the open division.
If that growth wasn’t enough, Bradford rostered a whopping 45 athletes in 2022, another steep jump from the year prior. The Bird Busters fell three targets short of a league crown, as O-E’s 1095 accumulative points edged out Bradford’s 1092 to win the STSYTL. In addition, Bradford hosted a first-of-its-kind, league-wide invitational to close the season.
Bradford sent three squads to states in Elysburg, and the team of Chase Gray, Clayton Brinsky, Wyatt Stark, Mitchell Brinsky and Jaydon Schwab placed 2nd in the open division. Stark added a 2nd-place individual finish in the junior division, falling only to Kane’s Jacob Edinger.
“We have improved our shooting every year,” Dan Brinsky said. “To me, success is seeing more athletes. It’s not winning state championships or nationals, it’s seeing the success of the kids who come up here and shoot, and learn gun etiquette and safety.”
The club’s rapid emergence has not come without obstacles, the foremost of which is cost. In shells and targets alone, a single practice demands around $1,000.
“We fundraise like there’s no tomorrow,” Dan Brinsky said. “I have a lot of local sponsorships privately and corporately, which makes it feasible. We’re a 501©(3) organization, and our money goes to shells, guns, entry fees, everything. We supply everything.”
Conflicting sports schedules also play a factor during the trap team’s six-week spring season. Eight of the team’s shooters also played baseball for Bradford High this spring, but the programs worked together to ensure athlete access to both.
“I have a lot of athletes, and it’s only growing,” Brinsky said. “Without my core group of officers in the club, I couldn’t do it. There are a lot of moving parts, such as purchasing firearms and shells, purchasing clothing and putting things together. We have a dozen coaches and they’re essential to what we do.”
It’s taken a small village, but Brinsky’s group has assembled a program that rivals others in the area and has done it in an impressively short time frame.
The Bird Dogs and other local trap programs will compete in the 2022 Scholastic Clay Target Program (SCTP) National Championships in Marengo, Ohio from July 7-16. As trap interest continues to peak in McKean County, the sport’s future has momentum on its side.
“We’re a very young team and we’re going to be a strong team in the future,” Brinsky said. “I have so many exceptional young shooters. I’m just looking forward to putting competitive shooters out there.
“If I can teach a kid to shoot competitively and safely, to me, that’s a success. Any ribbons or medals that come with it are just a bonus.”
(TOMORROW: You trap shooting’s popularity continues to increase across McKean County and beyond, evidenced by fruitful programs in Smethport, Otto-Eldred and more.)
(Jeff Uveino, Bradford Publishing Company assistant group sports editor, can be reached at juveino@bradfordera.com)
