Head Coach: Dylan Owens (4th season)
2024-25 Place Finishes: 3rd in Prairie Circuit Conference; 7th at ACUI National Championships – Division 2 (out of 14 teams).
Returning National Qualifiers: Sam Blevins; Ella Cowan; Hannah Dean; Colby Gaines; Devin Harris; Kaylee Hinton; Jaggar Luetje; Faith Ritchie; Lane Schoff; Cael Washburn; Katie Welker.
2025 Nationals Highlights: Sam Blevins – third place in men’s open trap; Katie Welker – third place in women’s open trap.
Outlook
Competition week has arrived for Concordia University, Nebraska Shooting Sports, which carries optimism into the 2025-26 season. The new campaign marks the program’s eighth season of official competition as a varsity athletic team. Along with the start of the fall semester, the Bulldogs have returned to the range at Oak Creek Sporting Club in preparation for the upcoming Fort Hays State Intercollegiate Shoot. Concordia is coming off a 2024-25 season that saw it place third in the Prairie Circuit Conference and seventh in the Division 2 breakdown at the ACUI National Championships.
Head Coach Dylan Owens enters his fourth season leading the program, which is just a couple of years removed from a third-place nationals finish. At this point in the year, the Bulldogs are not thinking at all about team placements. Inrecemental progress will yield the results they aspire to attain.
“Improvement in shooting sports is always the goal,” Owens said. “In our sport, you’re not playing offense and defense. It makes a much bigger difference to see that you are growing and that the team as a whole is growing. Better placement is always nice, but it’s more important to ask, did we do better than last year? You can’t judge yourself based on the placement … The goal for the team this year is (for each athlete) to really buckle down in one or two events. We’re focusing on those scores to then see our team’s improvement.”
The roster of 20 features 11 returners who competed at the 2025 ACUI National Championships in San Antonio, Texas. Notably, Sam Blevins (third place in men’s open trap) and Katie Welker (third place in women’s open trap) are back after earning national medals this past spring. Blevins will continue to crack targets even as he takes on a larger role this season as a graduate assistant for Owens. A native of Hamill, S.D., Welker brings leadership and sets an example to follow as someone who has performed at a high level.
Blevins (La Grange, Ky.) and Welker are two of six remaining Bulldogs who have been part of the program for the entirety of Owens’ tenure. The others who fit that category are seniors Colby Gaines (Tulsa, Okla.), Kaylee Hinton (Hiawatha, Kan.) and Paige Roiger (Fairmont, Minn.) and graduate student Cael Washburn (Fort Collins, Colo.). At last season’s conference championships, Blevins and Welker won doubles trap titles on their way to impressive 2024-25 campaigns. In another major highlight of last season, Hinton and Breyer Meeks claimed high overall individual titles as Concordia took home the first-place trophy from the Hastings Invite. Additionally, Devin Harris captured a skeet championship at the SECC Invite.
In addition to Blevins and Welker, the returning national qualifiers include Ella Cowan, Hannah Dean, Gaines, Harris, Hinton, Jaggar Luetje, Faith Ritchie, Lane Schoff and Washburn. Blevins and Harris were the team’s top two HOA shooters at the national championships as they posted totals of 545/600 and 544/600, respectively. In a significant moment in the fall of 2023, Hinton snared a women’s trap conference title.
Those who have been there and done that have the responsibly of helping bring along the class of newcomers. The roster includes seven freshmen and a transfer in Clayton Gellerman of Anchorage, Alaska.
Says Luetje, who hails from Westside, Iowa, “There’s cohesion in our team. I know it’s the first couple weeks (of the semester). I think everybody gets along with each other great and we’re talking about what we’re going to do to better ourselves. We’re helping each other when it comes to practice and making sure everything is fine-tuned. We’re fixing those little things that weigh us down when we go to shoot, so we can be ready to shoot our best ever.”
It takes time to master specific disciplines within competitive shooting. The format at the national championships includes skeet, trap, doubles skeet, doubles trap, sporting clays and super sporting. Oftentimes, athletes enter college having not shot each of these events. The seniors offer a glimpse at what is possible for those with the right attitude and work ethic.
“Most of our seniors coming in were not used to shooting as many events,” Owens said. “To see them grow is rewarding. I’ll use Katie as an example. She had only shot skeet a couple of times before she got to college. Last week at practice she ran a 24 of 25 on one of the rounds. Now she’s starting to see it. Development takes time. You have to commit to the process of putting in the work. We’re seeing that with all the seniors now. They are still getting better, but they’ve improved so much in the past couple of years. They can tell the freshmen and sophomores that it works. You just have to stick to the process and it’ll come.”
Strategically, Owens is making a point of having athletes focus more intensely on just two or three of the six events. The idea is that approach will help maximize Concordia’s team scoring when it comes time for the 2026 ACUI National Championships in the spring semester. Owens wants to see a larger portion of the roster factoring into the team’s national championship scoring.
A Lincoln North Star High School alum, Cowan hopes to make waves as she enters her sophomore year. She was proud of how she adapted after having only shot trap prior to competing at the collegiate level. Said Cowan, “For me personally, I’m trying to work more on being more consistent and hopefully taking home a trophy or two. Hopefully I can get closer to that level … I think it’s going to be a good year and we’re going to really try to home in on our team bonding.”
The seven freshmen each come from different states with locales such as Idaho and Tennessee represented on the roster. Owens already sees the freshmen pushing hard in practice.
“I would say that this group of freshmen is probably the most competitive freshman group I’ve seen in a long time,” Owens said. “A lot of them came in setting really high standards for themselves. We’re working on curbing those standards a little bit to say you can do this, but let’s make sure our goals are not just scores. Our goals should be improvement. Most of them have a lot of travel experience at the state or national level. They come out in the first couple of practices and showed they’re here to work hard and to make a difference. I really hope that they’re able to do that.”
The season will get underway with the Fort Hays State Fall Intercollegiate Shoot on Saturday and Sunday (Sept. 6-7), offering a chance for the freshmen to showcase their talents while the returners look to display the progress they have made since the spring. Hopes are high as the Bulldogs brace for a hectic fall slate made up of seven total outings.
Says Luetje of the expectations, “A successful season looks like bringing home a couple national championships. It’s what I want and a lot of people on our team want. I think we want it really bad.”
For Owens, there are specific markers he is looking for, and it’s not all about place finishes. Said Owens, “It would be great to win a lot this year. I think what would be greater is to see the team continue in growth both personally and on the field. We’re working really hard, Sam and I, to create ways they can experience that growth. Practices will probably look a little bit different this year than previous years. We’re having them focus on a couple of events and be more expert in those events. If we take all 20 to nationals, if I could have all 20 place in one thing for the team, that would be the top of the mountain.”
The complete 2025-26 schedule can be found HERE. For the second year in a row, the Concordia Bulldog Sporting Invitational will be staged during the spring semester. The 2026 Concordia Invitational is set for Feb. 27-28 at Oak Creek. Meanwhile, the 2026 ACUI Collegiate Clay Target National Championships are locked in for March 15-21 in San Antonio.