On March 16, the University of Wisconsin-Platteville Sportsmen’s Club sent eight of their best pistol shooters to Fort Benning, Ga.

The eight shooters, known as the Pioneer Pistol team, comprised the first Wisconsin collegiate team to compete in the third annual Scholastic Pistol Program Collegiate Nationals.

The Sportsmen’s Club is composed of students from the university, along with members from Southwest Technical College, that meet every Monday from 4:30 to 7:00 p.m. at Southwest Tech.

Senior industrial technology management major and head coach Joe Pecora reflected on the trip and the team’s overall performance.

According to Pecora, the trip was successful, as the team finished eighth among 13 teams from around the nation, including the universities of Florida, Vermont and Kentucky, as well as a tactical team from West Point, N.Y.

“We left Platteville early on Friday around 7:30 a.m., drove 15 hours, stayed the night, shot the next morning and drove 15 hours back to Platteville,” Pecora said.

The Pioneers competed in the centerfire division, which means that they used a 9-mm pistol.

There are four stages with five targets at each stage, including a stop plate.

As long as the stop plate is hit, the plates can be shot in any order.

The competitors are timed from the point they hit their first plate to the point they hit the stop plate.

After four consecutive timed shootings in these stages, the lowest time is dropped.

Pecora finished with an overall score of 49, placing him in sixth out of 75 shooters.

The top finisher was Matthew Hawes from Texas A&M University’s Corps of Cadets.

Freshman mechanical engineering major Steven Gerek was the next best shooter for the Pioneer Pistol team, placing in 12th overall with a score of 52.06.

UW-Platteville sent a blue and an orange team to compete at nationals.

The blue team is considered the varsity team and finished eighth overall, while the junior varsity, or orange team, finished 11 out of 13 teams.

“[To] figure the teams, I looked at how they placed in relation to everyone else,” Pecora said. “The blue team was kind of our varsity guys and the orange team was junior varsity.”

Other members of the blue team, besides Pecora and Gerek, included junior mechanical engineering major Nicholas Loes and senior mechanical engineering major John Napp.

In order to qualify for this national competition, the team had to compete at a regional qualifying match held at Southwest Tech, where they swept the competition, taking the first three individual spots and first as a team.

An account, which Midwest USA set up for the Sportsmen’s Club, funded the trip to nationals.

The team gains funds as they compete and win different events throughout the year.

“To put it into perspective, we started two years ago with only a couple thousand dollars set up with Midwest USA and now we have $34,000,” Pecora said.

Aside from the club’s recent success, there is more than just competition involved within the program.

The description for the club on their Facebook page expresses important goals: “The Pioneer Sportsmen’s Club is an organization whose goal is to unite men and women through the common bond of shooting sports and fishing.”

As the club continues to grow and maintain the determination to succeed, even at the national level, Pecora, along with the other members, understand that this attention will only help what they aspire to contribute to the university.