Written by Doug Goodnough
Shooting sports have been a part of Madeline Corbin’s life for as long as she can remember. As early as age 3, she was shooting targets with her father’s .22-caliber rifle.
“And I got a BB gun for Christmas when I was 4,” said the member of the national champion Hillsdale College shotgun team.
Shooting was also a family affair for teammate Taylor Dale. Her father and two older sisters enjoyed competitive shooting, and she followed in their footsteps at the age of 8.
“I thought, let’s see what it’s all about,” she said. “And then I really fell in love with shooting and stopped doing some of the other sports I was involved in.”
The two headline a Chargers shooting sports program that rapidly developed into a collegiate powerhouse. In fact, the Hillsdale shotgun team is not only turning out collegiate national champions, but also U.S. national champions. Corbin and Dale each claimed national titles in their respective events at the recent USA Shooting National Championships from September 11-22, 2024, at the College’s Halter Shooting Sports Center. They are among some of the best shooters in the world in their age category.
At Hillsdale, the duo has their eyes on potentially bigger targets.
A Family Affair
While Wisconsin natives Corbin and Dale both credit their early love of shooting to their fathers, it helped that Corbin’s older brother, Josh, was involved in the local high school clay target league, and she soon followed suit. Dale was also encouraged by her two older sisters, who went on to shoot at the college level.
The state of Wisconsin is a high school hotbed for shooting sports. The Wisconsin Scholastic Clay Target Program (SCTP) has nearly 42,000 high school students participating in grades 6-12. Hillsdale College Shotgun Head Coach Jordan Hintz, ’18, is very familiar with the region. He was a product of the Wisconsin SCTP and was one of the early members of the Chargers’ shotgun team. When he took over as Hillsdale’s head coach six years ago, he went back to his roots to find top high school talent.
Hintz recruited in his home state using his own personal ties. His family lives near the Dales in the small town of Burlington.
“I talked to him [Hintz] probably my junior year, and then I really got interested into Hillsdale,” Dale said of the recruitment process. “The academics and the shotgun team and all the things that come with Hillsdale definitely put it at the top.”
Hintz brought Josh Corbin, ’25, to campus, and he soon became one of the team’s leaders and most accomplished shooters. In fact, he was recently crowned the NCSA Great Lakes Champion at a tournament, breaking 145 out of a possible 150 targets.
Hintz immediately worked on bringing Josh’s younger sister, Madeline, to Hillsdale.
“Once Jordan got Josh to commit, he said, ‘Oh, you’ve got a little sister that shoots too, right?’” Madeline said. “So Jordan was talking to me my whole high school career. I toured a couple of colleges, but I only applied to Hillsdale. I made up my mind that if I was going to go to college and be on a shotgun team, Hillsdale was it because nothing compares to the team and the education you can get here.”
A National Profile
Hintz’s recruiting pitch is pretty simple.
“Academics always come first,” he said. “I really believe there’s no other school that offers shooting at a funded level that can even come close to competing with us academically. Finding those high-level academic achievers is often harder than finding the skill on the shooting side.”
Corbin, a sophomore, won an unprecedented seven collegiate national championships as a freshman, setting a new Hillsdale standard. And Dale, a freshman, has made an immediate impact with her USA Shooting Junior national title in international trap. She has also contributed to Hillsdale’s championship success.
“There can’t be anybody who has had a more successful collegiate shooting career as a freshman than Madeline had at the nationals,” Hintz said of his super sophomore. “She’s won all kinds of World Cup medals already, but at the collegiate national championship last year, she won seven individual national championships. She alone has won nearly half of the total individual national championships we’ve ever had. What do you tell her after that? It’s hard to think of anything to say. Just ‘Amazing. Great job.’”
Dale has already shot around the world, including international trap competitions in Korea and Germany.
“To be able to qualify and travel to something like that is incredible,” Hintz said of Dale. “And then to come back here and shoot so well. She was six targets ahead of the next junior woman at the nationals.”
Hintz continues to recruit nationally, adding student-athletes from states like Minnesota, Arizona, Nebraska, California, and Tennessee. He said the combination of facilities and the College’s academic profile and scholarship support are very strong selling points.
“To be able to find people who have Olympic aspirations and convince them to come here is, in a lot of ways, easier than at other schools,” Hintz said. “Our team probably has more international-style, Olympic-style athletes than any other team in the country.
“There was not much recruiting when I was here as a student,” Hintz added. “But the sport has grown so much since then. And the skill of the athletes also continues to rise. In the last couple of years, I feel like we’ve finally achieved not only the size of the team that is needed to be successful, but also the skill level.”
The Mental Game
As a football or basketball coach, there are plays to design, game-day strategies to develop, and strength and conditioning programs to supervise and administer. However, when you coach shooting sports, most of the coaching is done before any competition begins.
“We work on the mental game a lot,” said Hintz, who relies on his past experience as a collegiate shooter to counsel his student-athletes. “Everyone is in a very different spot mentally when they get here. I try to pick and choose what works best for them.”
“He’s very supportive and wants us to put forth our best effort,” Dale said of Hintz. “The big thing is contributing to the team.”
Training consists of shooting hundreds—if not thousands—of clay targets to the point where the physical part of shooting becomes second nature. Both Dale and Corbin also read Jason Selk’s 10-Minute Toughness and perform daily mental exercises to deal with the pressure of competition. In a sport where missing one target sometimes can mean the difference between first place and out of medal contention, dealing with stress is paramount.
“What goes through my head while shooting sporting clays and I miss? I think, OK, what can I do to change my process to break this target the next time?” Corbin said. “Because usually you’re shooting the same target multiple times. One bird at a time. Break the next one. It’s really all you can say. You don’t get caught up on the losses.”
“I think it’s just trying to remember that at the end of the day, you are human, and it’s OK to make mistakes,” Dale said. “But also remember your training and try not to worry about the outcome. Worry about the process.”
Chargers Through and Through
Shooting sports are not NCAA-sanctioned, so high school recruiting is not the same as it is in other sports.
“We don’t have an official [recruiting] channel,” Hintz said of the process. “There’s not a website or recruiting service that provides information to students or students’ information to us. It’s a lot of me tracking down contact information and trying to figure out how to get in touch with them. It’s worked out pretty successfully for us so far.”
He said Athletic Director John Tharp has embraced and welcomed his program and student-athletes into the Athletic Department.
The shotgun team is now part of the Student Athletic Advisory Committee and has a “buddy team” with women’s basketball. And Hintz said he hopes to have some of the Chargers teams come out to the Halter Center to do some shooting with his team.
Corbin said the entire College is also very supportive of the shooting sports teams. And having her brother as a teammate is extra special.
“I think it’s cool that both of us are here, representing our family at Hillsdale,” she said of Josh. “What makes the shotgun team special is how much support we get with travel costs, practice, competition—everything. And then a scholarship on top of it. You are very well cared for here. I love the campus. I love the traditional values, the small size, and the core classes. Everything here at the College makes it special. I would not be as happy if I were anywhere else.”
“I remember introducing myself to some people at the beginning of the school year, and they said, ‘Oh, you’re on the shooting team. That’s so cool,’” Dale said. “I really like the community of Hillsdale. I think that’s probably my favorite part. And I am starting to grow more in my faith, which was something that I was really looking forward to.”
Olympic Aspirations?
Corbin and Dale are two of the top junior women shooters in the U.S., if not the world. They are part of a stable of accomplished Hillsdale shooters who are making a name for themselves in USA Shooting. With the Halter Center as a training home base, the Chargers have the daily opportunity to shoot at a world-class facility.
So, it begs the question: Are the Olympics a goal for Hillsdale shooters?
“I’d love to go the Olympics,” said Dale, who is looking at a career in exercise science. “I think that would be the coolest opportunity ever. I think it’s where I want to be in the future.”
“I’m not sure,” said Corbin, who hopes to major in biology and pursue a career in the outdoor industry. “But it’s a pretty cool feeling when you’re going overseas and you’ve got USA across your back.”
Hintz said the odds of a Hillsdale shooter making the U.S. Olympic team are low; however, they are low for any competitor. As a school that sports the motto “Strength Rejoices in the Challenge,” don’t rule it out.
“You only get two people [in each category] to go to the Olympics every four years,” he said. “And there’s not even a guarantee that the U.S. earns two spots. To be able to earn the spots to travel to World Cups is difficult enough, and now you’re talking about the Olympics, which is much more selective. But we have a handful of shooters who are absolutely working that way.”
Hillsdale’s double-barreled duo of Corbin and Dale is certainly in that mix.
Doug Goodnough, ’90, is Hillsdale’s senior director of Alumni Marketing. He enjoys connecting with fellow alumni in new and wonderful ways.
Reposted from the spring 2025 issue of Arete.
