Written by Doug Goodnough
Ida Brown, ’24, is used to focusing her attention on a target. The former member of the national champion Hillsdale College Shotgun Team and World Cup medalist didn’t miss many targets as a standout international trap and sporting clays competitor for the Chargers. Although her collegiate shooting career is over, she is still aiming for her ultimate goal: a spot on Team USA for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
“My goal is the Olympics,” said the native of Valley Springs, California. “I’m actually putting off going on to further schooling to do four years of just training and shooting and seeing where that takes me. If I qualify for the 2028 Olympic Games, it’s in California just four hours from home. That would be special.”
Soon after graduating from Hillsdale with a degree in exercise science, Brown was looking for a job that would allow her to continue her shooting career. Hillsdale Shotgun Head Coach Jordan Hintz alerted her to an assistant shooting coach position at Iowa Central Community College (ICCC) in Fort Dodge, Iowa.
“They never had a full-time assistant coach, and the head coach who I’m working for I actually competed against while in college,” Brown said. “It sounded like a good deal.”
Brown currently helps coach a program that features 45 student-athletes of various shooting skill levels.
“It’s a community college, so we have students here for maybe three years,” she said. “Most of our athletes are here for one year, so our coaching and recruiting is a little bit more sporadic.”
The Tritons finished third in the ACUI/SCTP Division IV National Championships in March, and Brown said the travel schedule is just as rigorous as it was at Hillsdale. She said the transition from athlete to coach was pretty seamless.
“I coached my teammates when I was at Hillsdale, so making the transition wasn’t too bad,” Brown said.
However, ICCC shooters range from those with competitive experience to those who go deer hunting with family and friends.
“We’re working at changing the dynamic of our team a little bit in the coming year, but for this year, we operated with basically everyone across the same playing field. Then we would evaluate based off the scores for how we traveled,” she said. “So with students who come in with very little experience, they definitely take more coaching. We need to spend more time with them, because you’re teaching them not only how to shoot well, but how to shoot in every discipline, too.”
Her job also allows her easy access to continue her shooting career, which includes several competitions and qualifiers.
“I really haven’t changed anything other than the fact that I don’t shoot for the College anymore,” Brown said. “I’m probably shooting just as much as I was in college. I’m shooting more competition targets than I was in college, but less practice. Every time I get a free moment to go shoot a couple rounds, I will.”
She said her Hillsdale experience both on the range and on campus was special.
“I won two national championships, so I have to put those at the top of my highlight reel,” she said of Hillsdale’s national championships in 2021 and 2024. “Those were with the team, and there’s no better feeling than winning one of those.”
Brown won multiple individual awards and competitions along the way, including a silver medal in international trap at the World Cup in Cyprus in 2021. She was the first Hillsdale student-athlete to medal at a World Cup event.
“I was definitely very lucky to get the experience that I got while I was in college,” she said. “When I came to Hillsdale, I was considered a team specialist. And by the time I left, I was considered an international trap shooter.”
On campus, she was a member of the Pi Beta Phi sorority. She switched her major from biochemistry to exercise science, with the hope of one day becoming a physical therapist.
“Part of the motivation to stick around for a fifth year was not to cram all of my required classes into one more year of college but rather spread them out over two,” Brown said of switching majors and taking a fifth year of eligibility due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “I really enjoyed the exercise science program. The goal is to get my doctorate of physical therapy after the 2028 Olympics. Even if I don’t make the [Olympic] team, I have to spend some time getting my degree, because I can’t put that off forever.”
Although she enjoys reading a good book, either in sports psychology or some work of fiction, most of her time is focused on shooting.
“It comes back to coaching and shooting,” she said. “Like I said, I’m very single-minded.”
Doug Goodnough, ’90, is Hillsdale’s senior director of Alumni Marketing. He enjoys connecting with fellow alumni in new and wonderful ways.
Published in May 2025
