This Olympian trains three times a week. He’s gunning for a medal in L.A. Games.
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- Derrick Mein trains three times weekly while balancing family and competition.
- Mein and his father built a personal Olympic-level facility to sharpen practice.
- Mental preparedness remains key as Mein targets a medal at the 2028 Olympics.
Blink and you might miss it.
That’s how fast Derrick Mein transitions from relaxed to laser-focused.
One moment he’s at ease, discussing an upcoming trip to Italy for the ISSF World Cup Shotgun event. The next, he’s staring down the barrel of his shotgun, ready for his next target. He has the kind of focus that Olympic trap shooting demands.
The sport is unforgiving. Targets fly out of 15 machines in a randomized order at regular intervals.
In competitions every shot matters. Fatigue compounds in both the muscles and the mind as the rounds progress. Giving into that exhaustion can cost a shooter a competition on any given day.
Every four years, there’s a chance it costs someone an Olympic medal.
Mein is 39 years old and a father to a 9-year-old daughter. He was raised on a farm in Walnut, Kansas, where his father taught him to shoot. He went on to college at K-State and now resides in Paola. He’s called Kansas home for practically his entire life.
He also happens to be the most successful male Olympic trap shooter that the U.S. has seen in more than two decades. He placed fifth at last year’s Paris Olympics.
“I left Paris not completely satisfied because I didn’t win a medal,” Mein said. “But I left proud of what I had done.”
He finished the 125-shot qualifying rounds in sixth place at the Olympics. It was enough to secure the last spot in the final.
He was the first American man to reach the finals since the 2004 Olympics in Athens, where his coach and friend, Lance Bade, also placed fifth.
Bade is a three time Olympian and previously served as a coach for Team USA. He left alongside head shotgun coach Jay Waldron after the Paris Games in order to start a private academy. The two men continue to coach Mein.
“Derek is just a competitor,” Bade said. “That’s probably his biggest asset. You’ll see that with top competitors across the world, when it’s time to compete or time to step up they have a way to will themselves to achieve a great performance.”
Bade lives in Colorado. Mein tries to meet up with his coaches two to three times a year when schedules align. Before heading out to the ISSF World Cup Shotgun in Lonato, Italy, Mein spent a few days with Bade.
“It’s not just being on the line coaching,” Bade said. “It’s a little of everything. We spent a day shooting and talking. Then we went fishing.”
That time away from the sport is pivotal. Mein spends less time with his gun than some may expect — if he’s preparing for a competition he’ll practice three times a week. If he’s not, he takes the time off and spends it with his family.
Mein still shoots with his father, Rick Mein, on the farm where he was raised. There were no Olympic trap shooting facilities nearby, so Mein would often have to drive to St. Louis or Fort Worth, Texas.
“We said heck and talked to Promatic, the brand that builds the throwers,” Rick Mein said. “And by golly they said they would provide all 15 of them.”
Together, the father-and-son pair put in the manual labor and concrete work to create an up-to-par facility for Derrick’s practices. Derrick’s parents now host the local high school trap team on their property, as well.
Some days Derrick shoots a different game. On a Wednesday morning in early July, less than a week away from his trip to Italy, he navigated a golf cart down the gravel path at Power Creek Shooting Park in Lenexa.
Other patrons nodded his way. He used to work at Powder Creek but now just stops by on occasion to shoot sporting clays. The difference between the games doesn’t affect his preparation.
“If you’re shooting anything, you’re building a relationship of the sight picture between the gun and the target,” Mein explained as he reloaded his shotgun.
He practices and competes with the same gun. After the Paris Olympics, however, he switched the company for which he shoots. That change came with a new German gun — a Krieghoff K-80 Parcours-X, with a custom stock that was made in Lincoln, Missouri.
A shooter’s relationship with the guns matters. But something else is equally as important.
The game is 95% mental, if not more, according to Mein.
Once the shooting fundamentals are mastered there isn’t much left to change. The difference in performance often comes down to mindset.
Olympic trap shooting is quick to fluster an athlete and does nothing to comfort an afflicted mind.
“It works your mind nonstop and it loves to bring doubt in,” Bade said of the sport. “It’s just such an unforgiving game on the mental side that it can wear you out.”
The taxing aspect of the game got to Mein in Paris. He said he dug an “early hole” when he expended a significant amount of energy in the qualifying rounds.
“I was drained,” he said. “My big takeaway is that I need to do a better job of getting myself mentally and physically ready so I can handle that if the situation arises again.”
Mein’s coach and father have praised his ability to mentally stay in a competition, especially when things get off to a rocky start. But Mein said there is much work left to be done.
For now, it’s about getting reps and building routines. Each day of practice and every competition is a stepping stone toward the long-term goal of returning to the Olympics in 2028.
Three years goes by fast. Mein wants to be ready for his next shot at an Olympic medal.
This story was originally published July 11, 2025 at 6:30 AM.
