In the third year of the Wichita State Shooting Team’s existence, the team is loading up for their second home tournament, the Shocker Fall Classic, which takes place this weekend at the Ark Valley Gun Club and Shady Creek Gun Club.

The tournament will consist of skeet, trap, sporting clays and an optional bunker program, an Olympic-based competition. Participants will shoot 100 of each type of target and for those who compete in the optional bunker program, will shoot an additional 75 targets.

The Shockers’ tournament also brings something completely new to shooting tournaments on a national level. The team’s own coach, Tom Binyon, designed a new system to classify shooters in efforts to make competition more fair and rewarding for shooters.

“I suggested in the last coaches meeting that we develop a class system so shooters would compete with shooters of similar skill,” Binyon said.

The other coaches questioned the possibility of developing a system to classify shooters so Binyon took matters into his own hands.

“I spent the summer collecting last season’s shooting averages from every competitor to divide into five classes,” he said. “Everyone competes for event champion, but shooters still can win their class.”

This weekend’s tournament will be the first to use Binyon’s system, which is expected to be reinforced nationally at the Association of College Unions International Collegiate Clay Target Championships this March.

Until then, Binyon said he hopes this tournament will prove itself effective to the other coaches so the smaller tournaments around the country will implement the class system before nationals.

The five classes are AA, A, B, C and D. Wichita State’s team of 12 only has one AA-class shooter, president and team-founding shooter Austin Schroeder.

“I am very excited, but also nervous, to be shooting in the AA class,” Schroeder said. “I think Coach Binyon’s idea to implement the new class system into the sport is an excellent idea. There are many great shooters that may never see a medal because they can’t pull off perfect 99/100 or 100/100 scores.”

Binyon said the SFC has 112 registered shooters and expects up to 125 by the end of late registration. Some schools registered include Iowa State, Fort Hays, Hastings University, Midland University, University of Central Missouri, East Central Oklahoma and Lindenwood University. Lindenwood has been the Division I champions for the last 12 years.

“We’d appreciate any support by coming out,” Binyon said. “We’ve been told we hold the best tournament in the country and we’ll have the best shooters in the country here.”

Events kick off at 7 a.m. Saturday at the Ark Valley Gun Club in Kechi.