Brian Wade competed for the last time for the Stetson Skeet and Trap Club on Saturday and walked away with his best performance ever.

Wade, who graduates next month with a bachelor’s degree in management, won as the highest scoring overall shooter and placed first in men’s trap against Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University at the Volusia County Skeet and Trap Club in New Smyrna Beach on Saturday, Nov. 19.

“It was my last competition in college,” said Wade, 43, of DeBary, who enrolled at Stetson after retiring from the U.S. Air Force. “The guys in my squad were shooting so good, I couldn’t let them beat the old man.”

Stetson Club President John Byrd won first place in men’s skeet and scored as the second highest overall shooter. The club brought home the Volusia County Clay Target Championship Trophy for only the second time in three years. Byrd intends to display it prominently in his Stetson Palms apartment on-campus until the two teams meet again for the spring semester.

“It’s the best showing we’ve had since I’ve been here,” said Byrd, a junior accounting major who joined the club two years ago.

Byrd said he missed once in the first round of skeet, hitting 24 of 25 clay-bird targets. Then, in the second round, he hit all 25.

“That was my first 25 in skeet ever,” he said. “It was exciting.”

Saturday’s awards come after the club placed fourth overall in a regional competition in Jacksonville last month against eight other college teams from the Southeast. And it comes as the team has seen a big increase in membership this year, almost doubling its membership to 30 to 35 male and female students, Byrd said.

University mentor, Richard Libby, Ph.D., husband of President Wendy B. Libby, attended Saturday’s competition and said it was the team’s best match since he helped found the club in 2009 with Lanny “Trey” Moore.

“What we’re proud of is, with the leadership of our club officers and our coaches, there’s a sense of pride in being a member,” said Libby, adding that the club’s campus advisor is Stetson Public Safety Chief Bob Matusick and its volunteer advisor is Mike Davis, husband of Linda Davis in Stetson’s Office of Development and Alumni Engagement. “Those young men and women were just so good, so delightful.”

Libby said the team emphasizes firearm safety. Stetson students must complete firearm safety training before they can hold a weapon, and the club’s firearms are locked in a vault when they’re not in use.

“We’re very, very strict about those things,” said Libby, who has been a clay-target shooter since 1970. “Stetson has been applauded, since the beginning, for having some of the most courteous young men and women that you could imagine.”