You can tell right away that Madyson McFarland is not like other girls.
Sure, she likes to run track and play volleyball. And she kills it in the classroom, where she holds a 4.0+ grade-point average at Edgewood Middle School.
But she would really much prefer to be wielding her shotgun.
Madyson, 14, is not just an ordinary shooter, however. She is national caliber and recently earned her way onto the 2024 USA Sporting Clays sub-junior team.
“I got into shooting shotgun when I was 8-years-old,” she said. All of my family shot. I would go to my sister’s shotgun tournaments and I wanted to do that when I got older.”
When she was eight, her dad, Dwayne McFarland, asked her if she was ready to learn.
“I just remember the excitement and joy going through my body,” Madyson said. “Ever since the first time I did it, I fell in love with it and that’s all I’ve wanted to do.”
And, oh boy, does she do it well.
Madyson’s specialty is shooting sporting clays, described by Wikipedia as “a form of clay pigeon shooting, often described as ‘golf with a shotgun’ because a typical course includes from 10 to 15 different shooting stations laid out over natural terrain.”
She was the youngest New Mexico women’s skeet shooting champion, and she was also the lady’s trap shooting age-group champ.
It is not something that comes naturally as she regular works at her craft at the Del Norte Gun Club in Rio Rancho, making the 90-minute jaunt several times a week with her dad.
As matter of fact, the club is one of Madyson’s primary sponsors, helping offset a portion of the significant costs associated with her continued success – particularly travel expenses.
In addition to her practice at Del Norte, she also makes regular excursions to see her trainers: Anthony Matarese Jr., founder of A.I.M. Shooting School in New Jersey and Ray Brown, a private instructor out of southern California.
Then there are the frequent tournaments across the country.
Despite the costs, it is absolutely money well spent, Dwayne McFarland said.
“How many parents spend just about every weekend with their kids from 10-17 years old,” he asked. “At about 14-15 years old, most parents don’t see their kids. We spend every weekend with ours.”
Madyson shoots a Krieghoff K-80, 12-gauge shotgun, a top-of-the-line weapon that she immediately felt comfortable using.
“It took a lot of hard work and dedication to show them that I deserved that shot gun,” she said. “When you find the right car, you feel it, it clicks, or when you find the right shoe, it just fits. That’s how I felt when I picked up that gun for the first time. I just had to have it, it was my gun.”
While there is plenty of fun involved in what she does, her parents are strict on what she needs to do to keep on her hectic pace.
“I have to keep a 4.0 (grade-point average) and all As in order to travel and shoot,” Madyson said. “It’s a lot of hard work. Usually when I go home, I do my homework as soon as I get home, turn in all of my stuff on time so I don’t have to worry about it and on the weekends, I don’t have to go to do homework and I can go work with my dad. Sometimes my dad works at the club setting up targets and I’ll go with him and help on the course and afterward we’ll go shoot.”
Dwayne McFarland is a pretty fair shooter himself, although he never quite reached the national level like his daughter, but he was ranked in the top-100 out of about 30,000 shooters. And, of course, that led to some inter-family rivalry.
“For years and years, she never beat me,” he said with a chuckle. “About a year and a half ago at one of the regional tournaments, I had shot pretty decent and she beat me by a couple of targets, I cried like a little girl. I was so proud. And she’s been kicking my ass ever since.”
Practice and repetition is just a small aspect of what makes a good shooter, Madyson said.
“Muscle,” she said, adding she works out with weights. “And a lot of patience, too. When you start shooting you’re not going to be good at it right away. Then the dedication to work for it. Good eyes, good hand-to-eye coordination and, most importantly, having good sportsmanship.”
It also takes a community to build success, Dwanye McFarland said, giving a shout out to Del Norte, as well as Edgewood principal Leslie Gatzambide and Moriarty-Edgewood School District Superintendent Todd Bibiano, both of whom have been supportive in Madyson’s endeavor.
“Coming up, she’s going to be gone for 22 days training leading into the world championships,” McFarland said. “Mr. G, if there is any testing that needs to be done, he will pull her out of class and test her himself. To make sure everything is taken care of, her teachers make work available online. This would not be possible without their support.”
As for the future, Madyson said she doesn’t really see this as something she wants to do professionally. Rather, she has her heart set on earning an appointment to the Air Force Academy, learning how to fly cargo planes then eventually move into the commercial pilot realm.
As for the more immediate future, however, she knows that with this recognition comes more scrutiny.
“There’s a lot of pressure,” Madyson said. “Definitely a lot more pressure. I’ll be going to a lot more shoots and there will be a lot more focus into my scores. There will be a lot more people watching me now, too and it’s also a different set of expectations for me.”