Written by: Evie Gravlin (emg004@marietta.edu)
You may not know a lot about the sport of shooting, but it can be found here on campus at Marietta College. Kyleigh Kozel is twenty-two years old and a senior at Marietta College who participates in competitive Clay Shooting.
This is a sport where participants use a shotgun to shoot at flying clay targets. She has been playing this sport since she was ten years old and there are three different disciplines for this sport. There is sporting clays, trap and skeet, and Kozel does all three!
Kozel loves the challenge and differentiating of the stations because in trap and skeet shooting one must look at the same targets. However, with sporting clays you have 17 different stations. These stations each are a different target.
In clay shooting the discs can be green, pink, or black and they come out of a thrower that is either automatic or manual. In addition, shooters are given different displays of the discs. In which they describe sporting clays as golf with a shotgun.
Kozel has shot in various places in the United States and even in Italy. Due to the fact that she is a very skilled shooter, so was given the opportunity to be sponsored by some brands. Her main practice area in Pennsylvania is called Seven Springs which also acts as a ski resort. She got into this sport because of her older brother, and he started this sport as something for him and her father to do. Her ten-year-old self was interested to try it and she got hooked! She started on a team, and although she was the only girl, she was excited because she had the opportunity to beat the boys.
In 2015, she won her first Pennsylvania State Championship in her division and decided to go to Nationals in San Antonio. She won that as well for her division. For the next five years in a row after that, she won the Pennsylvania State Championship for her division and became two-time National Champion in that time. Just winning at sporting clays was not enough for her so she decided to win more titles with trap and skeet shooting with another team.
Kozel had D1 offers from the University of Alabama, the University of Maryland, and a school in Oklahoma. But Kozel chose to leave her shooting profession behind and focus on her schooling at Marietta College. Her brother went to Marietta in 2014 for a visit and while he toured with her, she said on campus “if you don’t go here, I will”.
Her brother ended up going to Marietta with a major in petroleum engineering and she ended up at this school as well. The reason for her choosing Marietta over other schools is that she did not want to feel like just a number at a big school like Alabama. She wanted to be known by her professors and have a connection where they want her to succeed and to have a close-knit relationship with them.
Kozel tried to start a shooting team at the school but was denied. She was not going to let that get the best of her because she still loves the college, and her academics always came first. Since Kozel is a senior, she is coming close to her graduation and has had nothing but a great last four years at Marietta College.
Edited by: Zachary Worstell (zdw001@marietta.edu)
