Heaton Leads Young Program To National Title

Oskaloosa, Iowa – It’s uncommon for a three-year program to have won one national title, but the William Penn Shotgun Team has now won two in a row.

Head Coach Steve Heaton says the success is with the student-athletes. “At this level, it’s more about building their confidence and giving them the opportunity, give them the tools they need to succeed.”

Heaton started coaching shotgun sports in 2007 with the Oskaloosa Shooting Team, and when his son went off to college at Midland, it wasn’t long before Heaton was traveling back and forth to help that team.

William Penn University Shotgun Sports 2023 (submitted photo)

Regarding his ability to coach a team, Heaton says, “It usually takes me about two weeks to learn individuals. Because in the shotgun world, every individual you have to coach a little bit differently. It’s not like basketball or football, where you go out there and just run plays.”

“Some of my female shooters might see the target a little bit differently than my male shooters; they’ll see leads differently. They’ll see the shadows differently on the birds, you know, so you have to figure out what each individual needs to give them their proper tools to succeed.”

There are currently 28 student-athletes on the team, and 26 qualified for nationals. Heaton will lose three to graduation this year, but ten more are coming next year.

Success breeds success, is what the team is finding out, but for Heaton, it’s more than the national titles helping bring new members to the team. “Not only that, but they’ve heard how we run practices how much we shoot. Because in the shooting world, it’s, it’s basically like a basketball player; you’re not gonna be a good free throw shooter until you shoot millions of free throws, right?”

“Same thing in the shotgun world; you can’t shoot them targets unless you shoot it, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times,” added Heaton. “That’s what we do at practice: we will shoot 1000 rounds in a week for a 300 bird tournament.”

Heaton went on to praise the university’s support of the team and the level of dedication and support from the parents of the athletes. Many of them were on hand during nationals and helped make things much easier on the team.

Make sure to listen to the entire interview to hear about the experience of getting the team and their shotguns on the plane from Chicago to Las Vegas and much more in the above video.