When members of the College’s Trap and Skeet Club show up for a competition toting their FABARM or Caesar Guerini shotguns, murmurs of admiration sweep through the crowd. 

To a shooting sportsman, the gun is everything. Now, thanks to a sponsorship from the firearm manufacturer Caesar Guerini/FABARM USA and local sporting goods store Molly’s Place, Washington College athletes are equipped with some of the finest—and most beautiful—firearms available on the market.

Last December, coaches Aaron Amick and Doug Pfaff ’10 reached out to the Italian company—with U.S. headquarters in Cambridge, Maryland—and negotiated a significant discount on competition-grade firearms for the team. The College purchased seven standard FABARM shotguns, and some students bought their own.

The guns, manufactured in the northern Italian cities of Brescia and Travagliato are highly regarded among sportsmen for their beautiful craftsmanship, exacting manufacturing standards, and premium materials. Coaches Amick and Pfaff both shoot Caesar Guerini trap guns, while the student team members shoot FABARM AXIS RS12 models in trap or sporting configurations. There are three brands: the Caesar Guerini, made in Brescia, FABARM, made in Travagliato, and a new line specifically for women, the Syren, made jointly by Caesar Guerini and FABARM.

 “If a student wants to learn to shoot, we can teach them on competition-grade shotguns,” says Amick, who shoots a Caesar Guerini Summit Impact. “If they have a shotgun that is not designed for the rigors of competition, we can give them access to a team-owned FABARM or get them a great deal on a FABARM or Guerini.”

The program, too, is going strong, finishing among the top competitors at the ACUI Collegiate Clay Target National Championships last spring. Among the 14 competition members this year are four freshmen—from Alaska, southern California, Delaware, and Massachusetts—who chose Washington College in part because it had an intercollegiate competitive shooting team.

 

“It’s a huge sense of pride for this company to be associated with this program,” says the general manager of Guerini/FABARM USA. “Aaron and Doug are great competitors, they’ve got a great team, and they both believe in our product. They could easily have bought another brand that would be much cheaper, but they know that the fit and the performance of our shotguns represent a tremendous value. It’s an honor to have this team flying the flag for us.”