The Fresno State Gun Club’s trap and skeet team will take part in its second contest of the year next week: the 2014 Association of College Unions International (ACUI) Collegiate Clay Target Championships.

The competition will take place at the National Shooting Complex in San Antonio, Texas. The team will be competing in Division 3, which is for teams with 10 or fewer members.

ACUI’s event will run from March 25-30, and more than 75 colleges and 450 students will be participating. This will be the trap and skeet team’s second and final event of the semester.

This organization was formed last spring and is funded through Associated Students Inc. Nathan Chang, the vice president of external affairs and a member of the trap and skeet team, said the team is looking forward to this upcoming challenge.

“We used to only have four or five guys, but now we’re sending nine guys to compete,” Chang said. “Our club is growing and growing.”

Chang and his group are also heavily involved in the community. They spend many hours doing community service events such as fundraisers and food drives. They also hosted a hunter’s safety course last Saturday on campus. All 43 of the people who participated in the course passed.

The team’s first competition of the year took place on Feb. 22-23 in Phoenix, Ariz. They placed third out of 15 teams. They are surprised they placed that high, because many of the members were new to shooting trap and skeet.

Sophomore criminology major Yordan Coss was one of them. It was just his fourth time participating in the event.

“We definitely did better than we expected because we were all new to the sport,” Coss said.

Coss, one of the club’s first members, said he decided to give it a try because shooting was a hobby of his growing up.

“I’ve always been into guns and stuff,” Coss said. “Trap and skeet is just something that pretty much everybody on the farm grew up doing, [such as] shooting clay pigeons. So it was just something that I felt would be fun to take part in.”

He also enjoys the social aspect of the club because it allows him to meet new people and establish connections.

“A lot of us met through the club, and we got pretty close,” Coss said. “It definitely brought a lot of new friendships. I’ve gotten some experience as far as shooting trap.”

Coss said the trap and skeet team doesn’t require one to be experienced in order to join. It welcomes interested students “with open arms.”

The team holds practice every Tuesday in Kingsburg.

“Definitely come out and give it a shot, you don’t have to have any experience with guns or anything,” Coss said.

The Gun Club will hold a fundraiser on Thursday at Tacos Marquitos. Ten percent of all sales will go toward paying for the team’s transportation to Texas for next week’s competition.

“We are open and available to any student that wants to get involved in shooting sports or just support Second Amendment rights,” Chang said.