Scholastic Shooting Sports Foundation (SSSF)

Early Development (2001-2007)

The roots of the SSSF trace back to 2001, when the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) launched a scholastic trap program to introduce young athletes to clay target shooting through structured, coach-led teams. The concept worked — participation grew fast enough that the program expanded to include skeet and sporting clays within a few years.

In 2007, the SSSF was formally established and chartered in Pennsylvania as a standalone organization, taking over administration of what had been the NSSF's scholastic shooting effort.

Independent Organization Era

Separating it into its own 501(c)(3) gave the program dedicated nonprofit infrastructure and allowed it to pursue funding, partnerships, and scholarships independent of NSSF's industry-focused mandate.

The organization expanded beyond shotgun sports in 2012, launching the Scholastic Pistol Program (SPP) to bring action-style pistol shooting into the scholastic framework. By 2016, that program was rebranded and broadened into the Scholastic Action Shooting Program (SASP), adding rimfire rifle to the discipline lineup alongside pistol.

The SSSF's stated mission centers on youth development — using shooting sports as the vehicle, not just the destination. The formal framing is that coaches and adult volunteers use the sports to teach:

• Sportsmanship development
• Personal responsibility training
• Honesty and ethics education
• Integrity building
• Teamwork skills

That's not just brochure language for this organization; the structure of the programs — mandatory coach certification, background checks, team-based competition formats — actually reflects it.

The longer-term goal, as the organization describes it, is to serve as a pipeline into organized sanctioned shooting — feeding athletes toward bodies like USA Shooting, the National Skeet Shooting Association (NSSA), the National Sporting Clays Association (NSCA), and the Amateur Trapshooting Association (ATA).

Get kids into the sport young, develop them properly, and hand them off to the national governing bodies when they age out.

Scholastic Clay Target Program (SCTP)

The Scholastic Clay Target Program (SCTP) is the shotgun side of SSSF's work. It covers American trap, American skeet, and sporting clays, organized into school and club teams that compete at local, state, regional, and national levels. The SCTP Junior Nationals is the program's flagship annual event, drawing competitors from across the country.

Scholastic Action Shooting Program (SASP)

The Scholastic Action Shooting Program (SASP) handles the rifle and pistol side. Athletes compete in speed shooting on steel targets — a format that borrows elements from practical shooting disciplines but is adapted for scholastic competition. Firearms used in SASP include .22 LR rifles, .22 handguns, revolvers, pistol caliber carbines (PCC), and centerfire handguns, depending on division and ruleset.

Competition Structure

Both programs share a common competitive ladder:

Teams can be as small as a single athlete for participation purposes, though a full competitive squad in SASP requires four athletes. There's no upper limit on team size, and teams can field multiple squads.

SSSF Competition Ladder Structure

Competition runs locally, by state, regionally, and nationally, with virtual match options also available through SASP. The SSSF also runs an annual scholarship program for graduating seniors. Since 2013, the program has awarded over $1,111,500 in scholarships to more than 1,100 student athletes, funded through sponsors and donors.

Membership Structure

Membership in SSSF programs runs through team registration under either the SCTP or SASP umbrella.

Those fees buy access to SSSF's $10 million liability insurance policy (the SCTP/SASP policy) — which covers registered athletes, coaches, and volunteers at sanctioned events and range days.

Coaches get access to:

• Certification curriculum access
• Ongoing educational materials
• Direct support from SSSF program staff

Athletes get:

• Competition access across all divisions
• Eligibility for scholarship consideration
• Industry partner discounts on firearms and ammunition

Teams also have access to endowment account funding options and raffle partnerships through MidwayUSA Foundation, which has provided firearms and other items to help teams run fundraisers.

Coach Requirements

All registered coaches and adult volunteers are required to complete a background check every two years, administered by the SSSF. That's non-negotiable across all roles — head coaches, assistant coaches, and adult volunteers who work in any capacity with the team.

Scholarship Program Success

The SSSF's scholarship program stands as one of its most concrete accomplishments — more than $1.1 million distributed to over 1,100 athletes is a real number, not a rounding error, and it's grown consistently since the program launched in 2013.

Coach Education Infrastructure

The coach certification infrastructure is also worth noting. The SSSF Basic Shotgun Coach Certification Program, built in partnership with Kalkomey Enterprises through the ShootingSports-Ed.com platform, delivers a 13-unit online curriculum covering equipment, safety, marksmanship fundamentals, mental game, team management, and ethics. It requires an 85% or better pass rate on unit quizzes and a final exam, followed by a mandatory in-person range day with hands-on evaluation. That's more structured than most volunteer coaching pipelines in youth sports, shooting or otherwise.

Federal Recognition

Funding for coach certification development came in part through the Multistate Conservation Grant Program (grant F19AP00118), supported by the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program and jointly managed by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That federal funding connection speaks to the program's recognized conservation and outdoor recreation value.

SSSF staff on the SASP side hold positions on the NRA National Coach Development Staff and teach NRA Level 1 Coach classes, adding a second credential pathway for action shooting coaches.

The SSSF operates as a 501(c)(3) public charity with a national director, program managers for each discipline, and administrative staff. Program-facing operations run through separate web presences — mysctp.com for clay target and mysasp.com for action shooting — while the parent organization operates from sssfonline.org.

Coach certification is delivered through shootingsports-ed.com, a platform developed with Kalkomey. State-level partnerships with DNR and Game & Fish agencies handle much of the range day logistics for coach training — SSSF certifies the trainers, and state agencies help identify and vet them locally.

SSSF Organizational Structure and Platform Distribution

The organization publishes audited financials, its current 990 return, a GuideStar listing, and a Charity Navigator page, all linked from its website. That level of financial transparency is above average for organizations in this space and worth noting if you're evaluating it for donations or sponsorship.

The SSSF's relationship with the NSSF is foundational but no longer operational — NSSF launched the original program, SSSF took it over in 2007 and has run it independently since. The two organizations have collaborated on outreach, including a partnership with NSSF's First Shots program to connect new youth shooters with SCTP teams.

SSSF's Network of Partner Organizations and Pipeline Relationships

The SSSF explicitly positions its programs as feeder pipelines to USA Shooting (the national governing body for Olympic shooting sports), the ATA (Amateur Trapshooting Association), the NSSA (National Skeet Shooting Association), and the NSCA (National Sporting Clays Association). Athletes who come up through SCTP and reach competitive ceilings have a clear path into those adult national programs.

On the action shooting side, SASP staff's involvement with the NRA's coach development program creates an institutional link there as well, though SASP operates independently with its own ruleset and competition structure.

The MidwayUSA Foundation has been a consistent financial partner, particularly for team fundraising and scholarship support.

If you're a parent or volunteer trying to figure out whether to plug your kid — or yourself — into one of these programs, here's the honest read.

The SSSF programs are about as well-structured as youth shooting sports gets at the national level.

The mandatory background checks, tiered coach certification with real pass/fail requirements, and $10M liability coverage aren't window dressing — they reflect an organization that has thought seriously about the duty of care involved in putting adults and kids together on a range. That matters, and it's not universal across youth shooting organizations.

The scholarship money is real and has been growing. If your athlete is a high school senior competing at a serious level in either SCTP or SASP, they should absolutely be applying. Over a thousand kids have already collected on it.

For coaches, the certification pathway is legitimately useful even if you already know how to shoot. The curriculum covers team management, mental coaching, and risk management — things that matter a lot more when you're running a twelve-kid high school squad than when you're shooting your own rounds.

The online portion takes 10-15 hours; budget a full day and treat it seriously.

The areas where SSSF has room to grow are mostly geographic. Range day availability for coach certification is still uneven — as of the last available data, dedicated state partnerships for in-person training existed in a limited number of states, and coach candidates in underserved areas have to travel or wait. The organization acknowledges this and is actively working to expand trainer capacity, but if you're in a rural state without a nearby certified trainer, that bottleneck is real.

Who benefits most from joining? Youth athletes who want structured, team-based competition with a competitive ladder that goes somewhere. Coaches who want liability coverage and a certification that's recognized by the major national bodies. Schools and clubs that want a turnkey framework — handbook, insurance, coach training, competition calendar — without building it from scratch.

For anyone building from the ground up or looking to connect young shooters to something larger, the infrastructure here is solid and the price of entry is low.

Who might not need it? A private youth club that already has strong coaching, its own insurance, and no interest in sanctioned national competition can probably do fine without SSSF affiliation. But for anyone building from the ground up or looking to connect young shooters to something larger, the infrastructure here is solid and the price of entry is low.

• Scholastic Shooting Sports Foundation. "About SSSF." sssfonline.org/about/
• Scholastic Clay Target Program. "Coaches Training." mysctp.com/coaches-training/
• Scholastic Action Shooting Program. "About SASP." mysasp.com/about/
• Scholastic Shooting Sports Foundation. "Become A Coach." sssfonline.org/become-a-coach/
• Scholastic Shooting Sports Foundation. "SSSF Launches Modernized Coach Education Programs." sssfonline.org/sssf-modernized-online-coach-certification/
• Scholastic Shooting Sports Foundation. "SSSF Programs Partner with NSSF's First Shots." sssfonline.org/scholastic-shooting-sports-foundation-programs-partner-with-nssfs-first-shots/
• Scholastic Clay Target Program. SCTP Handbook 2019. sssfonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/2019-SCTP_HAND.pdf
• ShootingSports-Ed.com. "SSSF Coach Training Online." shootingsports-ed.com
• NSSF Industry Intelligence Report featuring SASP, 2016.

Last Updated: February 24, 2026