Posted on Fri, Jun. 28, 2002
Rock Hill's Fennell shooting star of clays
By PAT ROBERTSON
Special Correspondent
SPORTING CLAYS
• What: The South Carolina State Sporting Clays Championship;
• When: July 5-7;
• Who: More than 200 competitors from across the Southeast;
• Where: Backwoods Quail Club, near Georgetown;
• Information: Call (843) 546-1466 or check Web site:
www.backwoodsquailclub.com.
Will Fennell grew up shootinghunting with his dad and competing on rifle and pistol teams -- but he found his real niche when he discovered sporting clays.
"I got better faster in sporting clays than anything else I had done shooting," said the Rock Hill shooter, who is considered a favorite in the South Carolina Sporting Clays Championship July 5-7 at Backwoods Quail Club near Georgetown.
In sporting clays, shooters move from stand to stand, with each shooting situation designed to imitate a hunting event, such as flushing quail or pass shooting at doves.
Fennell has titles in the Zone Four Championship and the prestigious Homestead Club Championship this year, and sporting clays enthusiasts consider him one of the hottest shooters in the state going into the state shoot.
Zone Four is the regional championship for Florida, Alabama, North and South Carolina and Tennessee. The Homestead Resort Club in Virginia plays host to the oldest large sporting clays championship in the United States.
Jaybie Cantey, international champion from Camden who has won the state shoot for the past three years, is out of the country and will not compete.
"I give credit to my dad and my granddad for my love of shooting," Fennell said. His dad, Wallace Fennell of Rock Hill, is an avid hunter, and his granddad Dr. Wallace Fennell was a competitive rifle shooter.
"I always hunted growing up, dove and quail, but I never shot competitively until college," Fennell said. "Back then there was no sporting clays here, but I was dying to be in competitive shooting."
Fennell joined the rifle team at Wofford, shooting international smallbore, and liked it.
"But there's just not a lot of that kind of shooting available unless you are in college," he said.
After college he got involved in pistol shooting and shot competitively for years.
"I enjoyed it but did not do all that well, and I had to really struggle to move up."
Then he was invited to join a Rock Hill team that was competing in the Chevy Team Challengeshooting rifles, pistols and shotguns -- and his love of shooting went a new direction.
"One of the guys on the team took me to shoot clays. I had heard of it, but had never done it. I never shot any registered clay targets until about 1995 or '96."
He found this was one shooting sport he could move up quickly in, until he leveled off about three years ago.
"This year I began to break out and started winning more two-day championships," Fennell said.
Fennell benefited when he took a job with a companyCamillus Cutlery of Syracuse, N.Y. -- that allows him the flexibility to hone his shooting skills.
"Preparation is essential in shooting," he said. "You have to have a lot of confidence in your equipment and your technique."
Winning a two-day shoot is exponentially more difficult than winning a one-day shoot, Fennell said. Everything has to be right to have a winning weekend.
Fennell shoots a 12-gauge Beretta DT 10 with 32-inch over/under barrels with interchangeable choke tubes. He participates in 15-20 major two-day competitions every year, shooting between 5,000 and 6,000 registered clay targets along the way.
He will be packing his shotgun and plenty of confidence for the South Carolina Sporting Clays Championship.
