He was that kid in class who could never sit still, never stay on task. Always fidgeting, always distracted, sometimes even disruptive. Teachers found him a challenge.

"I was horrible," Michael Flores recalled. "They thought I had issues at school, like ADHD. They thought I was angry at kids, but I really was mad because I couldn't stay attentive with a teacher talking all the time. I'd go into a different world."

Look at Flores now, though. He is 16 and the absolute picture of concentration on the firing line at the Coon Creek Trap & Skeet Club outside of Lincoln. Feet firmly planted, the butt of his Perazzi 12-gauge shotgun nestled between his right clavicle and shoulder, eyes fixed to some distant point.

Waiting. And waiting. At the command, "pull," an orange clay disk goes screaming across the sky at 65 miles per hour and at a 45-degree angle. In a split second he homes in and with a plangent roar – kablooey! – another trap is reduced to shards. Casually discarding the spent shells into a bucket at his feet, Flores walks to the next shooting station with a singleminded focus.

Now a senior at Elk Grove Charter School, with college on the horizon, Flores has found that the concentration and discipline he has developed as an international trapshooter helps in all aspects of his life. Yes, even rote schoolwork.

"I can just sit down and focus, like I do in shooting, and just get (assignments) done," he said.

But it is at the shooting range where Flores' talents flourish. He is a two-time member of the USA National Junior Olympic trapshooting team and will move up in competition later this month with the Olympic Trials in Kerrville, Texas.

In July, he won the California Olympic Trap Championships for the second time in three years, besting shooters older and more experienced.

While much of Flores' success comes from innate talent – "The first thing I noticed," said 1996 Olympic silver medalist Josh Lakatos, Flores' coach, "was that he was extremely gifted with hand-eye coordination" – his ability to master the mental aspect may be a bigger factor in his early success in a sport where shooters usually don't hit their prime until their late 20s to early 30s.

"I've seen a lot of good shooters come out here (in practice rounds) and do pretty well, but when it comes to competition, they can't take it, they just sort of fold," said Flores' father, also named Michael. "Too many people focus on results when they should just be focusing on execution."

The younger Flores has had to learn that lesson himself, through repetition, relaxation and the help of a sports psychologist to ingrain these principles.

"You just have to teach yourself," the younger Flores said. "I'd be out here on the line and the biggest thing is waiting. You mount your gun and then wait. I had to teach myself to slow down – it's like the gun's molded to you. By the time you call 'pull,' the rest just happens. Just make sure your eyes are on the target."

A lazy smile spread across his face. A lanky 5-foot-11, with short-cropped brown hair and red-lensed sunglasses that hide his intense eyes, Flores may come across as a laid-back teen who just likes to chill with friends. But with a shotgun in his hands, he transforms into a fierce competitor.

"He puts on his game face and goes at it," said Charlie Carroll, Flores' first coach when he took part in a scholastic training program. "If he can get a little edge on you, he won't let it go."

Nowhere was that more evident than at the two-day state championships in Southern California. After the first day, Flores was in a three-way tie for the lead with defending champion Chuck Dietl and USA Shooting Team member Susan Sledge. At the end of the second day, Flores and Dietl were tied. In a pressure-filled shoot-off, the kid methodically broke 24 of 25 targets to claim the title from his elders.

"Shooting 24 out of 25 like that, with that type of pressure, is exceptional in a shoot-off," Carroll said.

Flores faced a similar situation last month in the USA National Junior Olympic championships in Colorado Springs. To advance to the finals, Flores had to engage in a shoot-off with another competitor. He said he had never felt so much pressure.

"I don't get nervous, but shoot-offs, you know, they make me nervous," he said. "Anything can happen. My back foot was shaking. But I calmed down and broke the target. That set the pressure on the next guy. He went up there and lost it on the first shot. The pressure gets to everyone."

It's gotten to Flores in the past. After taking up trapshooting seriously at age 11 – his father, a former state Fish and Game commissioner, introduced him to it – Flores' biggest foe was often himself.

"When I was little, I'd get so mad," he said. "I'd throw my shells. And throwing your shells, that's a big no-no in the sport. My dad was like, 'You need to stop this.' My coach was like, 'If you don't stop this, I'm not going to keep coaching you.' I learned from it.

"There's no reason to get mad. Just move on. Focus on the next target, tell yourself, 'I'm gonna break the next target.'

"What I do is, I'll get up there and just go through my steps: Feet. Gun down here. Eyes steady. Grip. Mount. Gun down. Then focus for the target and just go blank for 3 1/2 seconds. If something's going on in the background and you focus on that, your eyes tense up. You really shoot with your eyes."

Lakatos, a three-time Olympian, says Flores is a work in progress and may not be ready until the 2016 Olympics. But he needs to commit himself, the coach said.

"It doesn't matter how many psychologists you have or how many coaches help you, everything's got to come from yourself," Lakatos said. "Until a younger person like him makes that kind of commitment and understands that this is an incredibly long journey and stuff doesn't happen in six weeks, you're not going to make that leap.

"There are so many stimulations outside of what they're doing that it makes it hard to knuckle down and focus. He's had his moments, like every kid. At 16, there's a lot of stuff you want to do in life. That's OK. The good thing about (trap) is, you don't mature until later, so you don't have to be a 24/7 athlete this young and still make it."

Another hurdle is that Flores has sprouted six inches in the past year, essentially outgrowing his equipment.

"Every time he goes out to shoot, it seemed like it was with a new gun," the elder Flores said. "It takes a good 5,000 rounds to 10,000 rounds before you're comfortable with it. So that's almost a year."

Flores' newest gun, a Perazzi, cost $11,000. Trapshooting is not a cheap sport. Shells and targets add up, the elder Flores said, as does paying for the coaching and traveling to competitions. The family lives in Elk Grove and must drive north to Lincoln or southwest to Martinez for a facility that specializes in international trap shooting.

"I'd say it's about $50,000 a year," the elder Flores said. "That's why, before committing, we wanted to make sure it was something Michael really wanted to do."

Flores' plans are to ascend to Olympic-caliber in trap, but he also wants to go to college. He's being recruited by Lindenwood University in Missouri, the eight-time national collegiate clay target shooting champion. Other schools, mostly in the south or Midwest, offer scholarships for shooters, but Flores apparently is leaning toward a school without a shooting team.

"He really wants to go to UC Berkeley," his father said.

His coach says that even a few years away at college won't hurt Flores' Olympic chances.

"He's got several years before he needs to worry about full-time training hard," Latakos said. "We're looking at 2016."

For now, though, Flores is looking only at the next target, yelling "pull" and squeezing off another round. He's staying focused.

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