By Michael Ahearne ’14
The Roundup
Brophy is home to many great sports teams, including a variety of club sports.
The lacrosse club team has been the state champion five times, the hockey club team won state in 2012 and the crew club team won the 2012 Arizona state championship.
One club sport, though, has been left out of this list this year: the Brophy Shooting Sports club team.
Last year, the Brophy Shooting Sports club team won the High Overall National Championship in the High School Division of the SCTP in Sparta, Ill.
This year, Brophy administration has taken action to be more involved in clubs, but in the process, removed its affiliation with the Shooting Sports club team.
According to Principal Mr. Bob Ryan, this is because it is the newest club sport, the school’s capacity is limited and the school finds it difficult to stand behind because the activity involves guns, which is a sensitive issue.
“We aren’t willing to engage that conversation,” Mr. Ryan said. “We probably could do it well, but frankly that is just not something that we want to exert a lot of energy towards right now.”
Although controversy may arise, Brophy should continue to keep affiliation with the Shooting Sports club team and should help it to thrive even more than it already has.
Let the team be a role model for safe and responsible firearm use.
The club team is currently the National Champions proving their strength and ability, and Brophy could help strengthen them more by keeping an affiliation with them.
Also, with the rise of college tuition bills, students are being offered scholarships for things such as shooting and archery, and Brophy keeping its shooting club team can help those students to get scholarships to colleges for doing what they like to do and are good at doing.
To help the school capacity, allowing parents back into the program to help run it could be one possible solution and help by advising them.
There are a few ways to help avoid controversy, avoid trouble in general and help ease the sensitivities of those worried about kids with guns.
The club already ran well and had a good set of students. This would make sure that the club won’t get into trouble.
The selection process shouldn’t be limited, yet those who join the club should be in good standing both academic wise and with the Dean’s office.
Also, a strict set of rules for both on and off field shooting as well as a strict no-tolerance policy for misuse could be implemented to help ensure that if something does come up, it would be dealt with quickly and accordingly and made sure not to happen again.
