Kitty Boyer Culbert

• Post by: mcalibrary
• December 18, 2023
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INDUCTEE

Kitty Boyer was born to shoot. The first time Penn State Football Coach, Joe Paterno, saw Ted Kwalick the future all-pro was just a high school freshman. But Paterno saw enough to say “What God has in mind here was a football player”. Similarly, what God obviously had in mind with Kitty Boyer was a trapshooter.

Kitty grew up loving sports and animals. She was a pretty fair lawn tennis player in her teens; and all the neighbors brought her animals for her “tender loving nursing care”.

She was attracted to trapshooting early, but was not encouraged by her father because he felt the recoil of the shotgun was more than she was able to handle. She persisted however, and finally was given an opportunity to shoot. Using her brother’s shotgun, she broke 10 rocks out of 25 the very first time she shot. She tried another 25 rocks and this time broke 18. The rest, as they say, is history.

Within two years she went from the point to a National Championship. The front page of the Mount Carmel Item of August 22, 1928 announced that, “The greatest honor ever achieved by a son or daughter of Mount Carmel in the sports world was won by 19 year old Kitty Boyer, who broke 186 out of a possible 200 to capture the Ladies National Championship of the Grand American Trapshoot”.

She was the youngest person to ever hold the National Championship. The Chairman of the Pennsylvania Trapshooters Hall of Fame said, “What a remarkable year for Kitty Boyer. It is a shame she did not continue her career to any degree after that ‘one great season’.”

She maintained an interest in related activities, however. And gained an excellent reputation as a horsewoman and animal rights activist. Mrs. Kitty Boyer Culbert died November 14, 1987.