With the new academic year starting, many clubs and societies are preparing themselves for the inevitable spike in beginning-of-term participation. The new societies, especially, however, feel the pressure in gathering enough membership to maintain themselves when participation slumps later in the year.
Dublin University Rifle Club (DURC), operating as Trinity’s target shooting club since 1962, has no doubt felt this pressure, as the Club gears up to face its first full year with an operational rifle range.
The old range, located in the Luce Building (where the Business Building now stands), was demolished near the end of 2015, leaving the club without a permanent home. For 10 years, bureaucratic red tape, a construction worker’s strike, and a global pandemic all contributed to the delay of a new range, with the now-opened venue over a decade in the making. Located in the second basement level under Printing House Square, the range has smallbore and air rifle accommodations in place, as well as a slew of new range officers. Joe McDonnell, this year’s Captain of DURC, cited “big plans” during his oversight.
“So for the moment, we’ve just been planning out the next month, so all of the freshers events, so post grad fair, halls, fair Freshers Week”, said McDonnell, in an interview.
McDonnell, a research staffer and former undergraduate at Trinity studying Data Science, remembers what the range was like back when he was a student, and the spirit and enthusiasm of those who ran it.
“We have range officers travelling from Limerick, for example. A lot of them have moved out of Dublin and have families and kids.”
He also mentioned the club’s plan for a “free range” on the first Wednesday of Fresher’s Fair, which, of course, refers to the club’s plan for free, open shooting for all students who want to try out what the club has to offer (not roaming farm animals).
Adding onto this, McDonnell mentioned the club’s planned activities for more seasoned shooters. “We have an open competition plan for the end of the month [September], so there’s a lot of work going into that. That’ll be the first open competition in the new range. It’s open, meaning external competitors can come and compete.”
The open competition will no doubt be the first big test for the club as they attempt to regain the former glory that earned them “500 to 600 new members per year”, according to McDonnell. Sharpshooters from all over the Isle are expected to attend in an attempt to prove their precise eye.
“It’s great…it’s the inaugural event, really, to kick off the year”, said McDonnell. “The target shooting community in Ireland can see we’re up and running. We have a fantastic range. Yeah, it’s worth coming to us for competitions.” McDonnell further cited the help and expertise of current Chief Range Officer, Patrick Lynch, himself a member of the old guard that defined the previous range at Trinity.
Lynch and McDonnell, in being two of the many who oversee the range, check in with the Gardaí and Trinity security “quite often” and oversee the difficult process of becoming a vetted range officer. McDonnell credits the lack of severe pushback from the College for opening the range on the Club’s strict safety measures.
“I think it’s really built on the previous decades of relationships in the College and ensuring flawless safety records and not causing issues.”
The Rifle Club has also given several of its alumni the skills needed to advance to national and international competitions, and recently hosted Olympic shooting gold-medalist, Ginny Thrasher.
And yet, despite the high achievements of the Rifle Club alumni, the committee has taken their knack for strategy and planning to their social events as well, broadening their reach as far as DU Trampoline Club in order to bring back the “fun” that gave the club its 600-member yearly pull in the first place: because there’s nothing safer than guns and trampolines.
“We needed to get the social aspect back”, said McDonnell.
The committee devised a strategy for accomplishing this rapport. Already stretched thin, it was decided that, rather than stretch their small staff of range officers to accommodate as much opening time as possible for the range, they would restrict themselves to two nights of shooting per week: each fully staffed. This was to make sure that range staff were not overburdened and instead had time to socialise. To McDonnell and the rest of the committee, this strategy of “being open less but accommodating more” was a deliberate action “to recreate a specific kind of atmosphere that [had] existed before” in the previous range.
Newer members of the club, such as current Public Relations Officer Caroline Schlenker, agreed that the strategy was no doubt working wonders.
“Overall, it’s a meditative sport”, said Schlenker. “It’s so welcoming, and so friendly.”
Schlenker represents a much-needed introduction of new blood to the club, one that has so long floundered under a lack of venue and a staff slowly ageing out of caring for a sport on campus that for so long had no participants.
The dedication of committee members like McDonnell and Schlenker is undeniable and apparently unshakeable; it would have to be to run a club in exile for over 6 years, all while committee members move on to other things beyond university. A solid “5 to 10” former committee members, including McDonnell, stuck it out, despite the fact that “it wasn’t a guarantee”, according to McDonnell.
“When something like this comes up at the higher levels of the college…understandably, they get a bit wary, and they’re unsure, because they’re talking about a rifle club on campus, and we’re in Ireland, where firearms in general aren’t that common. A lot of people probably haven’t seen one before…So yeah, we’re very grateful to sport and everyone in the college has helped us over the years.”
Now, McDonnell and Schlenker hope to get more to join the club they themselves fell in love with.
“You get into a Zen state”, said McDonnell.
“It’s very precise and meditative”, added Schlenker. “It’s very much on the individual.”
When it comes to why McDonnell himself joined the club, however, and why he believes more should, it was not about the shooting or the sport itself. Instead, it was the people.
“Even if I tried it out, and if I thought, ‘oh, I won’t actually join in the sport’, being at the range with the people who were there, the range officers, the committee, other members, that’s what really brought me back into the club…there’s a specific kind of atmosphere that I think has persisted since I was a member.”
With the dedication of old and new members alike helping to keep the now-thriving Club open to new growth, it’s no wonder that the Rifle Club’s last AGM saw the first contested elections for committee roles in years. Now, with a full committee and brand new range, it’s likely that this first full year for the club will be reminiscent of its old days.
