Female Keydet finds her place on VMI skeet shooting team

LEXINGTON — Afton Bricker waited to unveil the pink fashion and pearls.

Fitting in as a woman at Virginia Military Institute, which has only been co-educational since 1997, was challenging enough.

When Bricker decided to become the first woman to join the Keydets’ trap and skeet team, she thrust herself into an even more male-dominated world.

“At first it was really, really intimidating,” Bricker said last week, after firing a practice round at VMI’s range. “I was like, ‘They’re not going to like me and they’re going to be like, “Oh, this girl is coming on the team. Who does she think she is? She’s not even that good yet.” ’ But I came out and actually surprisingly, everybody was very accepting of me. They’ve really just taken me in.”

Still, her lucky hat, a camouflage Browning cap with pink trim, didn’t make it to the range her first time out. Neither did the pearls she likes to wear in competition.

“I wanted to fit in,” Bricker, an outgoing and bubbly 21-year-old Powhatan native, said. “Before I started looking like a goober.”

Five years ago, sergeant major John Neel restarted VMI’s then-dormant trap and skeet team at the behest of some cadets who approached him.

Neel’s first year working at VMI was 1997, the year the school became the last U.S. military college to begin accepting female cadets.

Neel was eager to have a female member on his team, but he knew it had to be the right woman. Someone who could handle being one of the guys while maintaining her own identity.

And, most importantly, someone who could shoot.

“I knew we had the kind of woman somewhere out there at VMI that could come out here and shoot,” Neel said.

He found that in Bricker, a Blessed Sacrament Huguenot graduate, who said she “wanted a challenge” when she chose to enroll at VMI. She is enlisted in the Army and wants to be an officer in the Army’s medical corps.

“She’s found that good balance between being a good cadet, an army scholarship holder, and she’s also girl,” Neel said. “She’s a girl’s girl. She has found that balance.”

VMI’s top shooter, Caleb Shortridge, a longtime friend of Bricker’s, convinced her to come out for the squad.

Bricker was admittedly nervous when she first tried out for the team. That’s why she left her pink-trimmed lucky hat behind.

Firing a sub-par 12 score didn’t help things.

But having Shortridge’s support went a long way to winning over her other teammates in the next few days.

And, Neel said, while many of the men were initially “apprehensive,” it didn’t hurt that Bricker quickly outscored a number of her male teammates.

“I didn’t know what to think at first,” rising junior Adam Marsh, a teammate of Bricker’s, said Sunday. “But she definitely proved her worth when she started shooting. It was kind of different because we weren’t sure what to make of having a girl on the team. Now, we don’t even think like that. We treat her like one of the team.”

Since last August, Bricker has become an accomplished shooter for the Keydets, who travel to eight to 10 competitions each year, all over the region.

For the team members, practicing twice a week at the range and traveling to compete is a much-needed break from the structured regimen on post at VMI.

“Being a girl at VMI is different,” Bricker said. “But that’s all I know. Shooting, I didn’t do it to get any publicity or have people think I’m trying to do something great. It really was just something to do because I thought it was fun. And I do what I want 90 percent on the team.”

Bricker’s parents, Ted and Lauren, said she was raised to be adaptable and confident in any situation.

Lauren Bricker signed Afton, one of the couple’s four daughters, up for dance lessons when Afton was two years old. She quickly took to dance, going on to study tap, ballet, modern and Irish dance, and traveling around the United States competing.

But Bricker also took to shooting at an early age, enjoying camping and hunting trips with her father.

“I have raised my girls to be able to drink beer or drink champagne,” Lauren Bricker said Sunday. “Always be a lady, but don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty.”

So Bricker competes against the guys, laughs and jokes with them at practices.

Her presence has also paved the way for other women at VMI. Neel said the team will have a second female member this year after two women tried out in the offseason.

As for Bricker, she is hoping to average a 24 score per round this year.

And she’ll shoot for it wearing her pink hat and pearls.

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