Nicky get your gun

One of the real joys of the writing business is getting to meet really interesting people, like young sharpshooter Nicole Ellis of Peabody. My story for the Boston Globe can be found here. Below is the original draft.

Nicole get your gun
Peabody sharpshooter sets sights on college, Olympic team

BILLERICA – From under her camouflaged baseball cap, Nicole Ellis peers through rose-tinted glasses, her features a study in concentration. Swirling winds at the Minute Man Sports Club have made her task all the more daunting. She slowly shoulders her Beretta 682 trap gun, steadies herself, and barks "Pull!" An orange clay comes spinning out of the bunkhouse, and Ellis tracks it like a cobra ready to strike before squeezing the trigger. An instant later, the clay shatters, compliments of Ellis's unerring eye.

The sight of a teenage girl so comfortable, so capable, with a shotgun might induce double takes from the uninitiated. Not at Minute Man, and not in the Ellis home. Her mother, Patricia Ellis, recalled a time when a sister-in-law, on seeing Nicole walk through the kitchen with her instrument of choice, rolled her eyes and quipped: "Some kids have a violin. Nicole has a gun."

Still, clay shooting is certainly further from the mainstream than Ellis's former pastime, Irish step dancing. From the age of 4 until she was 15, Ellis was a step-dancing enthusiast. Her folks spent thousands on lessons and elaborate dresses, as well as competitions. Eventually, though, Ellis said she tired of the subjectivity that began to permeate the sport, where placement was often decided on what program you belonged to, who your coach was, or what judge you had on any given day.

"It was all political," she said during a recent meet at the Minute Man Sports Club. "With shooting, you either hit the bird, or you don't. It's simple. I like that."

Toward the end of her freshman year at Peabody High, Ellis asked her dad about the guns he had stored in the basement. She had friends in ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps), and was intrigued by their conversations about shooting. Michael Ellis was once an avid shooter, but packed the guns away when his daughter was born. At her insistence, he took her to the Danvers Fish & Game Club in Middleton, and the pair began shooting pistols. Nicole soon graduated to rifle, and then shotgun.

Today, Ellis feels right at home here on the range. The shooting range. "It's a ton of fun," she said, flashing a broad smile. "I'm here to compete, and to enjoy myself and my friends. And if I'm winning in the process, that's pretty cool too."

For Ellis, winning is becoming a habit. This weekend, the 18-year-old is competing in the national Junior Olympics in Colorado Springs, CO. It is a return visit to the nationals for Ellis, who secured her first invitation last summer, less than three years after taking up the sport. Such a rapid rise through the ranks is far from commonplace, but her accomplishments don't surprise her coach, Hank Garvey. Ellis took full advantage of shooting being a year-round sport, and has embraced the sport's various disciplines, including trap and skeet, and various styles, including American and International.

"I can remember when she first started at Danvers Fish & Game with us. Nicole was as green as could be," said Garvey. "One of the greatest thing about her was that she never got too serious about herself. She always had an attitude of continuing to try, continuing to improve, continuing to work at it. It's been a great asset for her. She's never really shown any frustration with her performance over the years. And she's progressively gotten better and better over time."

Shooting clays requires physical skills, or "mechanics," such as core body strength, stamina, a calm demeanor, a steady hand, and above-average hand-eye coordination. The best shooters, however, can block out distractions. Garvey refers to it as the "vision channel."

"It's about getting on the right channel so your mind isn't wandering on to any inner thoughts, like having to win the competition or being focused on your competitors," said Garvey. "If you start to worry about those things, it will eat you up, and you won't perform to the best of your abilities. What we ask the kids to do is to worry about their performance goals, not their outcome goals. Performance goals include preparation, imagery, making sure your body is physically ready to do what it needs to do, and that you're on the vision channel.

"You can teach all the mechanics in the world, but the second side to this sport, and a huge part of it, is the mental preparation side. Nicole's been able to handle that side very, very well. When she approaches a competition, she'll put on her game face, and she's able to stay focused. She does exceptionally well because of that. That's a tribute to her. She's done everything we've asked her to do, and now she's reaping the benefits."

Last summer's Junior Olympics competition was admittedly a disappointment, said Ellis, as her gun jammed repeatedly, affecting her routine. However, the experience had a silver lining, as she met Olympic team coaches, rubbed elbows with a number of young shooters from around the country, and was introduced to Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri. The mid-size (15,000 students) liberal arts institution outside St. Louis is a dynasty in the sport of clay shooting, winning seven straight national collegiate championships, a run that would make most Division 1 basketball coaches salivate.

"The fact that Lindenwood had a shooting team really made it stand out for me," Ellis said. "And having such a good shooting team, how could I say 'No'?"

Ellis parlayed her superior grades at Peabody High (taking all Honors and Advance Placement courses, except for math) and superb shooting results into a scholarship (part academic, part athletic) with Lindenwood, where she plans to major in Fire and Paramedic Sciences. She said she won't put any additional pressure on herself, despite the school's overflowing trophy case, but definitely wants to take the sport as far as she can. That means a potential spot on the national development team and perhaps even a trip to the Olympics. She draws inspiration from Melissa Mulloy (now Melissa Mulloy Mecozzi), a Danvers native who took 8th place in the women's 50-meter rifle competition at the Sydney Summer Games in 2000.

At Lindenwood, where she's already known as "that girl from the Northeast," Ellis will join a team of roughly 120 shooters. She'll also have added inspiration – the team's head coach, Sgt. 1st Class Shawn Dulohery, was a member of the United States 2004 Olympic team. Just last weekend, Dulohery, who hopes to make the 2012 Olympic team, was competing at USA Shooting's national championships.

"Nicole will have some wonderful experiences competing at a collegiate level," said Garvey, adding that his star pupil has benefited from the support of her parents. "To think of where she started four years ago, and where she's going now, is just phenomenal."

All the while, Ellis maintains a sense of perspective that belies her age. "Making the national team, and the Olympic team, is the ultimate goal, but it's not the only goal. As long as I'm having fun shooting, that's what I want to be doing," she said before departing for Colorado. "As soon as it stops being fun, I'm just going to put the gun down."

Pressed, though, Ellis admits she doesn't see that happening. "It's something I'd love to do with my own kids someday," she said.


SIDEBAR
A sport on the rise
Clay shooting may not be a sport synonymous with Massachusetts, but it's one that's taken hold, and continues to flourish, especially on the North Shore.

"The sport as a whole, as a youth-involved sport, has grown tremendously in the last 10 years," said Hank Garvey, coach of the Minute Man Sharpshooters, and one of 38 people countrywide on the National Coach Development staff for USA Shooting. "Just in Massachusetts, there are more than 100 kids on different teams throughout the state."

Garvey and his wife, Mary, formed the Sharpshooters when their son, 11-year-old Hank Jr., expressed an interest in the sport. The group was originally based at the Danvers Fish & Game, but later moved to the Minute Man Sports Club (minutemansportsmen.com) on the Billerica/Burlington line to accommodate its growing numbers.

"They've rolled out the red carpet for us," said Garvey. "We have ample fields to train in all kinds of disciplines, and also have multiple coaches to work with kids on individual things."

In addition to a first-rate facility, the Sharpshooters also give members access to three national organizations: the Scholastic Clay Target Program (sssfonline.org); AIM (Academics, Integrity, Marksmanship) through the Amateur Trap Association (shootata.com); and USA Shooting (usashooting.com). Those organizations, and the club structure, are helping to erase any misconceptions about the sport.

"You might not think of Massachusetts as a gun-friendly state, but I'm finding it to be just the opposite," said Garvey, who taught hunting and shooting for two decades before forming the Sharpshooters club. "We have a lot of athletes coming from non-shooting families. I've found that anyone who tries shooting, nine times out of 10 they want to do it again.

"The first thing, and most important thing, we teach the kids is gun safety. That's our primary concern. We build it up from there. As the kids show the capability to be able to handle a firearm, we give them more responsibility."

FINIS