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Haley Castillo

����Ӱ�� offered the perfect combination for Haley Castillo: a homeland security bachelor’s degree program, courses in aircraft piloting and a top-ranked rifle team. So the young woman from New Mexico headed north.

Castillo started shooting as a freshman with her high school team in Albuquerque.

“I’d never touched a gun before,” she said. Now she’s on ����Ӱ��’s squad, which has won 10 NCAA championships and produced several Olympians over the years.

“I like the challenge of trying to keep myself focused, and I like to work hard,” Castillo said of shooting.

When she entered high school, her mom said she had to do a sport.

“I’d wanted to be in the Air Force for a while, so I joined [ROTC],” she said. “They said we had to do drill, or we had to do shooting. I had two left feet, so I got into the summer shooting program, and I was good at it.”

Castillo’s days at ����Ӱ�� begin early with a practice and a workout at the Patty Center. After classes, she returns to the range. Team members practice a minimum of 16 hours per week and work out for at least four.

In high school, Castillo mostly shot rifles powered with compressed air. At ����Ӱ��, she’s added small-bore .22-caliber rifles, which fire cartridges.

Competitions in each category require 60 shots. In small-bore shooting, those are evenly divided into standing, kneeling and prone positions.

Castillo said her fellow shooters helped fix her kneeling shot position.

“Now I just need to work on all the mental stuff, the mental game — being able to focus for that many shots and have the same mindset every single time and not get distracted,” she said.

Since arriving at ����Ӱ��, Castillo has put piloting on the back burner but is happy with her homeland security studies.

“It’s what I want to do with my career,” she said. “I don’t want to be stuck in an office. I want to go out and help people.”