Donna Furlong has a clipboard in one hand and a pencil in the other. “Officers are ready? Line is ready?” Furlong asks, and two safety officers confirm.
Four students stand in a line facing a big open field. They’re each wearing a bright orange vest and holding a long shotgun.
It’s mid-May at the Long Lake Fish and Game Club and the students are part of the Long Lake school district’s Clay Target Club. Furlong, who teaches math and science, is the club's advisor.
Furlong's 12-year-old son Kieran is one of the shooters on the team. "When I start, I close my barrel," Kieran explains. "And I put it up to the sky, almost, but not quite.”
He rests the back end of his gun against his shoulder. "Then, once my gun is ready on that point, I’ll yell 'pull,' and then I’ll follow it."
The clay bird is launched into the sky from the trap house in the field. It all happens in just a few tenths of a second.
This sport, which originated in England nearly 300 years ago, is meant to mimic bird hunting.
"Every shot is different," explains senior Griffin Farr. "No shot is exactly the same."
Farr also plays baseball in the spring and was the school's salutatorian. He’s one of the top shooters on the team.
Each round, students take 25 shots. Just a day earlier, Farr scored a perfect round.
"It’s a good feeling," says Farr of hitting 25 targets in a row. "It’s nerve-wracking," he adds. "If you shoot 24, leading up to the last shot is a lot of pressure. You’re second-guessing everything, but you’ve just got to stay calm and pull the trigger."
Farr's mom, Kami, coached the team for years and is now in the crowd cheering her son on.
"I think any opportunities your kids have to sometimes fail and sometimes succeed are great opportunities for their personal growth," says Farr. For that reason, Farr says she appreciates that Long Lake has a trap shooting team.
For Daphne Seaman, who is heading into her senior year this fall, her strategy to stay focused during a competition is to distract herself.
"I try to sing a song in my head, so I’m not thinking about if I’m missing or hitting them," says Seaman, whose hobbies also include art and poetry.
"Noah Kahan just came out with a new album," Seaman says. "I started singing 'Dan' by Noah Kahan."
Most of Long Lake’s trap shooting competitions happen on their home turf. Then, Furlong submits their scores to compare them with those of the other teams with eight athletes. The state’s conferences are broken down by team size.
Furlong says these athletes are the real deal.
"I’ve been doing it about ten years or so," says Furlong. "I am nowhere near as good as any of these children, but I know enough about the sport to know about guns and about safety and about ammunition."
She and all the kids here have taken hunter safety courses. They also have a big safety talk at the start of each season and before every competition week.
Another rule at the range is no cellphones, which Furlong says is key to getting the kids to connect and stay in the moment.
“When we’re here, it is all personable conversation. They’re talking to each other. They’re hyping each other up. They’re calming each other down," says Furlong. "They’re really encouraging to each other, and overall, they’re just an awesome group of kids to work with.”
New York State is home to more than 180 trap shooting teams, and the sport is growing. In the last decade, the number of students competing across the country has more than doubled.
"Like anything else, we’ve got to bring the youth into the game," says Bruce Jennings, president of the Long Lake Fish and Game Club, which provides all the ammunition and clay targets for the students, as well as access to the shooting range.
“If you don’t bring the youth in- as myself, I’m 73, and I’m going to fade out, and so we need those younger folks to take over the reins and do it for the next generation.”
The sport taps into the strong hunting culture in rural towns around New York. Many of the athletes in Long Lake have been around guns nearly all their lives, including Daphne Seaman, the only girl on the team.
"I’ve grown up surrounded by guns, hunting since before I could walk. My family has a bunch of guns, and my dad’s really into shooting, so he pushed me into it. He was like, ‘this would be fun.’”
Seaman says his passion has now become her passion. Just like any other high school sport, families and friends are here today sitting in lawn chairs, cheering on the athletes as they take their final shots of the competition.
"All out," Furlong declares. "Well done, you guys!" The students dump their shotgun shells into a big blue bucket and initial their names next to their scores.