Pleasant Valley High School’s trap team met for their weekly practice on Wednesday with excitement for the new season.
The team recently won the Baxter Cup, the equivalent of a state championship. At nationals, they won first place in handicaps and doubles, but took second overall, losing by one point.
Team members were eager to practice, but there are some tasks they had to complete before they could start.
A forklift arrived on the club’s field at the Clinton County Sportsman Club with a stack of boxes of clay pigeons. Students helped the coaches load up bunkers that contained the target throwers.
Assistant Coach Henry Olsen said these experiences help students learn responsibility, a key value when dealing with firearms.
The team highly prioritizes safety, Olsen said. Before students can start shooting their shotguns, they have a safety meeting with coaches. There also are regulations posted throughout the range.
When students are filling up disks into the machine, they leave a cone above the bunker to signal they are in there and are not allowed to leave until members outside knock the bunker doors.
And when safety measures are met, students can express years of experience and joy through their aim.
Students stand in a semi-circle platform, taking shots at flying orange disks, increasing their distance with successful shots.
Dax Law is a senior who participated at nationals on the winning doubles and handicap teams. His dream is to get a perfect score of 200 in singles.
“I love fighting towards getting a new goal and just altogether trying to get that 200 at state,” Law said.
But what he enjoys most is the friends he’s made through the sport.
“So last year, we had a squad that I had been shooting with for three years consecutively, and we had all grown together, and I’d been friends with them for those entire three years. We always shot everything together, and they are now graduated and are all in college, one of them for trap shooting, but it was just always a great time getting to see them, shooting with them. It never failed to be a fun experience,” Law said.
Ethan Ginneberge, a junior, also competed on the nationals team, hitting high marks on the team. Ginneberge has been competing since seventh grade and enjoys the competitiveness of the sport.
Maddie Dietsche is a sophomore who fell in love with the sport in middle school after having an interest in hunting. She then went to an all-girls “learn to shoot” event and has participated since.
Dietsche said trap shooting is more of a “mental sport.”
“You just want to stay locked in. And, if you’re having a tough time, just remember, it’s only one bird, just focus on the next bird,” she said.
Olsen said the sport has provided a space for students to not only compete but be rewarded for hard work.
“It teaches them about reward for putting in the effort and the work. This game is challenging, just like any sport, catching a ball, throwing a ball at a high level, putting a ball into a hoop. People do those things because they’re challenging, and they have fun when they can make something happen in a challenging play or a challenging environment,” Olsen said.
The challenge of the sport is mostly mental and about stopping “the idiot in your head,” Olsen said.
“Everyone’s got an idiot lives in a cage in the back of your head, and if you let him out, he’ll throw furniture around the room and make a mess of it. So, when things aren’t going well, you got to reset, take a breath, clear your mind and follow your trap shooting process. So it teaches a lot about emotional control,” Olsen said.
The sport is also inclusive in that it doesn’t have a bench, allowing all students to participate by providing various levels.
It takes some time at competitions for the squads to take their turns, Olsen said.
“So, there is a waiting game with it, but everybody who signs up shoots, and you could be logging the best score that you’ve ever had that day,” Olsen said.
And while Olsen said it was disappointing to not win first at nationals, it also showed a key lesson in trap.
“You can’t be thinking about scores necessarily. The only target that matters is the next one,” Olsen said.
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