By Jon Cronin

A Bloomingdale native was honored by his college for his achievements in Clay Target shooting.  

Camerin Caraballo, a 19-year-old sophomore at Washington College in Maryland, received his first Shoreman of the Week for the first week of April.

Caraballo was astonished at the news.  The Trap and Skeet team is only in its second year as a varsity sport at the college.  

“It wasn’t in my mindset since we’re new,” Caraballo said.  “As a new shooter, who has little experience, I didn’t expect to do as well to get that kind of recognition.”

He said got that news in early one morning at the beginning of April. “It was funny, I woke up and checked my phone at 7:11 a.m., and saw a text from my coach.”

As he shook off sleep, he thought, “Why would I get that?” and confessed, “I thought I was still dreaming.”  

According to a release by the college, Caraballo was given the honor for best individual score in his class when shooting at the ACUI Collegiate Clay Target Championships.  

The Washington College team takes part in various kinds of skeet shooting, where a clay disk is shot into the sky and a skilled marksman shoots at it with a shotgun.  In the competitions, the disk is released at different angles and from varying directions, depending on the version of skeet.

During the championships at the end of March, Carballo tied for fourth in Sporting Clays in Class B with 77 targets broken, tied for 13th in International Skeet with 72, tied for 22nd in American Trap with 88, and tied for 23rd in International Trap with 72. He also tied for 36th in Super Sporting with 76 and tied for 40th in American Skeet with 83.

The team’s coach, Douglas Pfaff, said he was not surprised when he heard the news.  

“He’s been shooting very well. I was very proud of him,” Pfaff said. “This is his first, hopefully first of many.  He has that potential,” Pfaff added.

Pfaff said that Carabello is a team player and that is what he encourages in all his shooters.  

The psychology major has been around rifles his whole life, but has only competed for a few years and only consistently since he started college.

He remembered shooting for the first time when he was seven years old with his father and uncles in rural Pennsylvania. The first time he tried competing he was around 16, he said.  

He added that when he was looking at colleges, he noticed that Washington College had a shooting club and decided to give it a shot during college orientation.  When he showed up for the shooting club’s orientation, he was nervous, “I never shot a shotgun before. I was afraid everyone else was better, but there was only one person out of 10 who had shot skeet.”  

He said he joined the club and got better.  Last year, the shooting club became a varsity team.

Caraballo said he doesn’t know if he’ll keep shooting as often as he does now. He noted that it’s an expensive hobby to keep going.  Right now, the athletics department gives them money to shoot at a local range on the weekends, but the team also fundraises to pay their expenses.  

His thoughts after graduation in two years bend more towards getting his master’s degree and whether he will pursue a PhD in biological neuroscience or cognitive neuroscience.