Grinnell takes state skeet title

Jaiden Grinnell, 14, prepares for her next shot at the Sunnydell Shooting Grounds as coach Matt Dryke looks on.

By Michael Dashiell

Staff Writer

The Olympic champion and the 14-year-old girl stand side-by-side, a 12-guage slung over the youth's shoulder. Standing a full foot shorter than her mentor, the girl looks anything but uncomfortable.

For much of the past two years, anywhere from three to all seven days a week, Jaiden Grinnell calls Sunnydell's shooting range home.

“Her eyes are good shooting eyes,” her mentor says. “She's got good, natural ability. Her dad got her started. I'm just trying to get her tuned up.”

Modesty must come easy for an Olympic gold medal champion, but Sequim's Matt Dryke seems earnest when he says this: “Jaiden is the best Olympic hopeful I've got.”

The Port Angeles youth served the International Skeet-shooting world notice after blasting away the 15-member field at the Washington State Skeet Shooting Association July 28-30 in Seattle .

Her score of 132 (out of 150) was 17 shots better than the runner-up, a blowout in skeet shooting terms.

So why would a young teenager ever think of picking a sport using shotguns and clay targets?

Grinnell says she likes the obscurity of the sport.

“(Skeet shooting) an unusual sport in g eneral. It's unique to do, especially for a woman.”

After showing prowess with a gun on excursions with her father Kurt, Jaiden Grinnell hooked up with Dryke at Sunnydell, shooting grounds just west of Carlsborg in the Solmar neighborhood, nearly adjacent to Robin Hill Park .

For two years, the veteran has put Grinnell through the paces and all the hard work appears to be paying off: earlier this summer, Grinnell qualified for a national competition with a top score at Fort Benning , Ga. She then took first place in the sub-junior women's age group (14-18) at the Junior National Olympics in Colorado Springs , placing fourth overall in the women's standings.

Days later, Grinnell topped the entire field of state skeet shooters in Seattle , taking home a championship trophy Dryke must have recognized: his name is engraved twice on the side.

Now Jaiden's parents — Kurt and stepmom Terri, and mom Michele Hayman — are watching their daughter train for the biggest competition in the world: the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing .

“I know he's done it all; he knows how to train,” Grinnell says.

Dryke adds: “We're knocking on the door. We just need some consistency.”

A sport unlike any other

Sport shooting doesn't grab headlines in the states like football and basketball, and it wasn't until 1979 that Americans created a formal, year-round U.S. shooting team. Athletes trained independently and met once a year to try out for events like the Olympics, Pan-American Games and world championship events. The team simply disbanded until the following year.

Soon after the U.S. formed their first organized team, Dryke became a legend in American skeet shooting. From 1979-1992, Dryke collected 10 national titles, three individual and two team world records, three Olympics appearances and the crowning jewel — and Olympic Games skeet shooting gold medal — in Los Angeles in 1984. The only American to win Olympic Gold in skeet, Dryke was inducted into the USA Shooting Hall of Fame in 2000.

Steadily, the popularity of the sport has grown nationwide, and Americans have won more than 90 Olympic medals, third most in U.S. medals all-time behind track and field and swimming.

Unlike other sports, shooting athletes can succeed at nearly any age. The 2004 U.S. team boasted of men and women from age 15-50, according to USA Shooting, the national governing body for Olympic shooting sports.

Grinnell is the newest face of skeet shooting, achieving success early and often.

But she tries not to think about that, or much of anything when she's lining up her next shot.

“The worst thing you can ever do is start thinking,” she says.

Jaiden goes through the paces in a typical practice round with Dryke last week.

With her gun on her hip (as per skeet shooting rules), Grinnell steadies herself and softly calls, “Pull.” Dryke presses a button and a disc soars through the clouded August sky. In a blink, Grinnell fires a round and reloads. She doesn't linger on the splintered pieces of clay falling to earth.

“Pull.”

This time, two discs — one from each “house,” or tower — hurtle across the sky. Two loud pops later and Grinnell is walking briskly to her next concrete pad a few feet away. She repeats this pattern (or something like it) in a steady arc across the eight points of the shooting range.

She ends her practice round with 23 hits in 25 tries.

“Dropped two,” she mutters to Dryke.

Good round, Dryke says. She'll keep winning if she can do that again and again.

 

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Dear Chuck:

Thank you very much for spending time with me on June 17th talking about vision. When I returned home I remembered seeing similar information in the book, The Magic Eye. I ordered a copy for you as a token of my thanks for what I learned from you at Sunnydell.

As you will see, the book is not intended to be about shooting, but there is much similarity between the book and our discussion on vision. I think you will be especially interested in the explanation given by an optometrist on pages 8-10, and the eye exercised on pages 18-25.

What I am working on now is combining eye-first-then-body and seeing-through the target. It makes sense to me now that "seeing through" and "passive vision" is actually the same phenomenon. It seems to me that developing this skill allows the mind to be more conscious of interpreting the three-dimensional information that the eye brings in to the brain, because seeing through is more a mental or combined mental and vision activity than it is strictly a visual one.

I hope you find this interesting, and thank you again for your time. Perhaps sometime you can let me know what you think of all this.

Sincerely,

Arah D. Martin