The School
Situated about two hours from Detroit and just 20 miles from the Ohio-Michigan border, Hillsdale College is a private liberal arts school that values its independence – it doesn’t take any federal or state financial aid for student grants, loans, and scholarships. Despite that, 96% of Hillsdale College’s 1400 students receive financial aid packages that average over $17,000.
With over 40 programs – including Accounting, Physics, Graphic Design, and even Sports Psychology – the school offers education opportunities for students of nearly every interest. The school is also known for its free monthly speech digest Imprimis, which has been published for over 40 years and now has over 3.5 million subscribers worldwide.
Shooting Sports at Hillsdale
In 2008 a generous gift earmarked for shooting sports scholarships posed an issue for the school – it didn’t have a shooting sports program.
That quickly changed as land was bought, one trap field was installed, and a storage unit along with a porta-potty was brought in. That was the modest start to the school’s shooting sports offerings, which today consist of shooting classes, a top-tier collegiate shooting team, and a state-of-the-art 109-acre facility that includes four American trap fields, a mile-long sporting clays course, an International skeet field, a small arms range, an archery range, and an International/Olympic bunker trap field
Since the initial gift that led to the creation of the program, over 14 million dollars have been given by private donors to support the school’s shooting program. Those funds have been and continue to be used to provide scholarships, fund operations, and make improvements to the shooting facilities.
“Last year we had 200 students in our shooting sports classes.” said Bart Spieth, Range Master and Shooting Sports Program Coordinator for Hillsdale.
Nationwide Success
Despite the school’s small size and student population, the school has had significant success against other schools across the US. Since their second year of competition, the school’s team won the Division III championship in 4 of the last 5 years.
This year, the team was only beat by 2 other teams – the Division II champs and the Division I champs. All other teams in all other divisions were handily defeated by the team of 11 shooters.
For students looking for a solid education with a strong shooting sports program with a top-ranked team, Hillsdale might be the place to aim for.
