Ryan Doyle, who started the Providence Christian Academy shooting team, signs his letter of commitment to join Liberty University's shotgun team.
Shotgun recruits will add plenty of firepower to Flames lineup
7/24/2024 6:07:00 PM | Shooting, Shotgun
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Liberty's eighth-year program will look to reclaim its ACUI National Championships Division 3 title in San Antonio with the influx of talent.
With the addition of its largest recruiting class to date — five incoming freshmen with Scholastic Clay Target Program experience — Liberty University's shotgun team is reloading for another shot at the ACUI National Championships in San Antonio next spring.
Doyle's club team won the Georgia State title and finished second at SCTP nationals.
Ryan Doyle from Suwanee, Ga., Jared Moore from Vesuvius, Va., and Mattox Purdham from Harrisonburg, Va., are all championship sporting clay shooters, while Lucy Myers from Hughesville, Pa., and Robert Byers from Belleville, Ill., are both highly experienced trap shooters.
Second-year Head Coach Jacob Davis, who competed for the Flames from 2018-21 and served as an assistant coach from 2021-23, said this may be the highest-quality recruiting class in program history.
"All are very experienced, tournament-ready shooters coming in," Davis said. "They'll definitely bring a level of experience that will be beneficial and improve our team scores, as well as a great level of spiritual maturity."
The five incoming recruits will complement 10 returning shooters from last season's squad that finished third among Division 3 programs at nationals with a score 61 points higher than its 2023 championship total.
Davis anticipates adding another five team members following the Aug. 26 tryouts at the Liberty Mountain Gun Club ranges, which would bring the roster to 20. Though that would be plenty for the team to move up to the Division 2 ranks (11-20 competitors), it plans to remain at the Division 3 level (10 or fewer) for at least another season.
"This year, we'll still only take 10 shooters to nationals to compete," Davis said. "We are looking at Division 2 down the road, but don't have a definite timeline for that. Everything is increasing at the same time, the quality of our program and the level of competition around the country."
He is confident the returning team members and incoming recruits will help the Flames and Lady Flames keep pace with their collegiate competitors.
Doyle, who started a shotgun team at Providence Christian Academy as a sophomore, also competed for the Etowah Valley Mambas travel team, which won the Georgia State Championship in June and placed second at the SCTP National Championships in Ohio last week.
He also excelled in super sporting clays at the SCTP Southeast Regionals, held in April on the same range in Savannah, Ga. that Liberty will travel to in February for the ACUI Lower East Coast Championships.
"That tournament will be a good precursor for nationals because we will be competing against a lot of the top sporting clay teams in the nation," Doyle said of the ACUI event. "The Southeast region as a whole is very competitive and how we do at (Lower East Coast) regionals should be a good representation of how we will do at (ACUI) nationals."
Doyle chose Liberty in part because of its spectacular LMGC shooting range, which features an assortment of clay target machines and skeet fields as well as a five-stand setup and sporting clay ranges. But his primary factor for committing to Liberty, where he will pursue a B.S. in Aeronautics: Commercial/Corporate, was that he felt God's calling to the Mountain.
"My dream, what would be ideal for me though I don't know if God's plan, is to fly for a commercial airline and retire from that and fly mission trips to other parts of the world," said Doyle, who originally wanted to attend an Ivy League school or go to Oxford University in England. "As I got older, I figured out that my relationship with the Lord and being in a community that's Christ-centered is probably more important than going to an Ivy League school."
Jared Moore competed for Brushy Mountain Clay Busters, coached by Jacob Davis.
Moore will also enroll in the School of Aeronautics and pursue a B.S. in Aviation Maintenance: Unmanned Airial Systems with a minor that will enable him to earn his private pilot's license. The sporting clays specialist lives in the mountains and has the George Washington National Forest in his backyard, where he enjoys hunting bear, deer, and dove.
Davis was his SCTP coach as a member of the Brushy Mountain Gun Club's Clay Busters in Hurt, Va., and Moore was the Virginia State Champion, the FITASC Junior Champion, and the King of the Hill FITASC Champion this year, out of 75 competitors in his category, at The Homestead in Hot Springs, Va. In 2023, he was the Northeast Region Junior Runner-Up, West Virginia State A Class Champion, West Virginia State Junior Champion, and the Virginia 4-H HOA State Champion.
Purdham, who also competed on the Brushy Mountain Clay Busters, graduated from Blue Ridge Christian School, which had a shooting club where he started competing in the sport in sixth grade. He competed in his first SCTP National Championships last week.
"I've worked pretty hard over the last six years to help the team grow and help others that maybe aren't as competitive to be able to grow as a group," he said of his private school team, noting that the Christian aspect of Liberty was one of the main factors that led him to commit to the program in May. "I knew a couple people on the team last year, and toured with the team and shot with them and loved it."
Lucy Myers holds her SCTP International Trap Finals Ladies Champion water bottle.
Myers, won both SCTP and Junior Olympic championships in international bunker trap this summer, earning a coveted Team USA spot, also plans to study in Liberty's School of Business. She may compete at Junior Olympic Nationals in September in Hillsdale, Mich. — site of one of the biggest shooting ranges in the north and home to Hillsdale College, an ACUI power — if she can fit it into her schedule. She is looking forward to launching her collegiate career.
"I am very excited to compete at Liberty, especially to expand into all of the different shooting sports, not just bunker," said Myers, who practiced with the team this spring. "I am excited about the community."
Myers' father competed on the skeet team at Purdue University and introduced her to the sport when she was in sixth grade. She recently won a bet with her dad by shooting a perfect score in a competition on a round of 25 bunker trap targets, bringing home a Dochshund puppy as her prize.
"I love competition, and I do love hunting," she said, noting that her family has traveled to Colorado and to Canada to go elk and moose hunting.
