Statesboro riflery champion Katlyn Sullivan continues to chase the perfect score

Four times Sullivan has scored 299 out of 300 points and last year set a GHSA state championship finals record.

“She’s just one of those kids that has that internal drive,” said Eric Heffner, a retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. who coaches the high school team. “Everything she does is perfection, whether it’s academics or athletics or volunteerism. She’s got the mindset that she’s going to do the best and be the best. It’s that old-school winning mentality, which I love.”

Credit: Photo Courtesy of Kathleen Sullivan

Credit: Photo Courtesy of Kathleen Sullivan

Sullivan and her Statesboro teammates are among the 17 teams who will compete in the GHSA state championships Saturday at the Ware County Shooting Sports Complex in Waycross. Competitors will shoot their air rifles from prone, standing and kneeling positions from 10 meters, with individual and team winners based on the total scores.

Last week Sullivan won the Georgia State Junior Olympics in air rifle and small bore. She qualified for the National Junior Olympics in April in Alabama. That could lead her to inclusion in the Junior Pan Am Games this summer in Paraguay. She has earned a scholarship to compete at the University of Nebraska.

Sullivan began shooting with her father and grandfather when she was young and attended a summer camp at Georgia Southern’s Shooting Sports Education Center when she was in the fifth grade. At the end of the eighth grade, she was approached by instructor Ashley MacAllister, who was the coach for the Puerto Rico Olympics team and currently is the competitions manager for USA Shooting. MacAllister saw Sullivan’s potential and encouraged her to get involved.

“I enjoyed shooting to begin with, and learning the challenge of it continuing to grow is the biggest thing for me,” Sullivan said. “I wanted to learn and get to experience the growth. It has shaped me and seeing my own growth is a really huge part of every practice … like what can I do better?”

Credit: Photo courtesy of Kathleen Sullivan

Credit: Photo courtesy of Kathleen Sullivan

She acknowledges being a bit of a perfectionist; that helps in the classroom, too, where she’s one of the top students in her class. She continues to chase the perfect score at the range and still laments missing one by a fraction.

“It was a 9.9, so it was literally just not touching,” she said. “You want to pull your hair out because you’re so close.”

Sullivan is the poster child for the sport, which has become dominated by girls. Camden County, which won the GHSA team title with a record score, was an all-girls team, as was third-place East Coweta. Three of the four shooters on runner-up Tallulah Falls were girls.

“The females are traditionally much better than the males,” Heffner said. “Their maturity level is higher than the boys. You tell them to do something, and they do it every single time. The boys, you know, they want to smack each other and play around.”

Riflery is like most other high school sports. Heffner, who had 27 years in the Army before coming to Statesboro 17 years ago, starts the newcomers with fundamentals and works with them as they develop into more experienced shooters. Success depends on repeatability — much like a golfer must duplicate the same swing — and centers around site alignment, the trigger squeeze and breath control.

Credit: Photo courtesy of Kathleen Sullivan

Credit: Photo courtesy of Kathleen Sullivan

Sullivan mastered that long ago and is at the point now where she can count her heartbeats and shoot between them.

“Imagine doing that after each shot,” Heffner said. “Each shot is essentially is own match. Katlyn is the consummate professional. She does the same thing every time. She is absolutely the best I’ve ever seen.”

Meanwhile, Sullivan continues the quest for perfection.

“Every shot has a score value, and it’s scored by a machine, so every person is chasing perfect,” she said. “It’s kind of hard not to lean into a perfectionist-like view.”