The Orange Beach Shooting Team took 14 medals home from the Alabama SCTP State Championships where about 200 shooters with 20 schools competed in trap, skeet and sporting clay shooting.

Shooting team coach Tim Harry said the competition "was pretty awesome" and the shooters "surpassed our expectations."

"There are no words," Harry said on how he felt at the competition. "If you see a kid hit a skeet target the very first time it's a face that's different from hitting a baseball. It's immediate gratification."

While several shooters left with top awards in different divisions, Harry said he was most proud of awards the team won as a whole, including first place sporting plays team and first place skeet team.

According to the Orange Beach Shooting Team's Facebook page, Rivers Looney won HOA sporting clays (out of 140 shooters), first place in sporting clays in the intermediate advanced division and first in skeet shooting at the intermediate advanced division; Colton Greene won first place in the trap rookie division; Wyatt Godwin won second place in sport clay shooting in the senior/junior varsity division; Brett Tindal won second place in trap shooting in the rookie division; and Brendan Murray won third place in trap shooting in senior/junior varsity division.

This was the team's third year competing at the state level. In their first year, Harry said they had a shooter win in each division. The team has continued to win more medals each year in the state competition.

Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon said on this year's achievement, "This is unbelievable. In just a few short years these guys have become the cream of the crop."

Kennon and Harry both spoke on how they were excited for the upcoming Orange Beach Shooting Facility to open.

Harry said shooters are taught gun safety "before they learn anything else." After training, he said "it's a mental game" where shooters must remain positive.

"You're not going to hit a target if you're not smiling," Harry said. "You can talk yourself out of a target just as much as you can talk yourself into it."

While there are "no expectations but the best we can do," shooters are being trained "to go to the Olympics." Several of the eighth-grade shooters already have the attention of colleges.

He said the city school has embraced the team more as a report showed trap, skeet and clay shooting as "the safest high school sport in history" with no casualties, unlike other sports like football or "even tennis" where twisted ankles are common.

Harry looks to encourage other students at Orange Beach Middle and High School to join, even if they wouldn't typically consider joining a sport.

"Not everybody can be a quarterback, not everybody can be a pitcher, but I can teach a kid in a wheelchair how to shoot skeet," he said. "There is no bench in skeet shooting. Everybody shoots, everybody participates."