By Jill Fennema –

Picture in your mind an open grassy field. A light breeze blows. The sun shines down on a large gathering of people. The air is filled with sounds of firing ammunition and burning gunpowder.

No, you are not on the battlefield. It’s not even a Civil War reenactment. You are at the site of the Minnesota State High School League Trap Tournament. There are no soldiers; just high school students armed with 12 and 20 gauge shotguns, myriads of lead bbs, blasting to pieces thousands of clay targets, for hours on end.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending my first ever multi-school trap meet. If you are familiar with track meets, there are some similarities. The team has a tent where they gather before and after competitions. The whole event takes place out-of-doors. Each athlete there wants to perform their personal best and make a good showing as a team.

That’s really where the similarities end. At a track meet, the kids perform simultaneously at events that are held in different spots. At the clay shooting tournament, all the shooting takes place at the same spot for your team. Novice, junior varsity, and varsity players compete at the same time and in the same heats.

With clay shooting, each station has five cement pads for the shooters to stand on, and each student shoots five shells from one spot and then the group rotates and they each shoot five more shots from the next station, until a total of 25 shots have been made.

The students from Edgerton Public competed on Monday, June 14, at the 1A event and the students from Southwest Christian competed on Tuesday, June 15.

Edgerton Public Shooters

Edgerton Public had five shooters represent them at the competition. For the day, which included 4 rounds of 25 shots, Jayson Delfs shot a 90 at that day’s competition. Aaron Veldhuizen shot a 25 straight during his second round of shooting. That was after having shot a 24 in his first round, making for an exciting time – only one shot from shooting 50 out of 50!

Jayson Delfs              90
Shania Mandersheid        60
Dalton Van Dyke           88
Tyler Van’t Hof           75
Aaron Veldhuizen          89

SWMNC Shooters

Southwest MN Christian had 10 students shooting on Tuesday. Brandy Pilaczynski shot an 89 for the day, which put her in the top 20 for the day. Gavin Rieck shot an 88. Brandy tied for 6th place with four other females in the 2A Conference.

Levi Binford              85
Levi Fennema              58
Lucas Fennema             84
Issac Gunnink             80
Mason Hamm                70
Mariah Hoekman            51
Levi Kuipers              77
Cody Post                 81
Brandy Pilaczynski        89
Gavin Rieck               88

EHS state trap shooters (from left) Dalton Van Dyke, Jayson Delfs, Shania Mandersheid, Aaron Veldhuizen, and Tyler Van’t Hof.

Brandy Pilaczynski shot an 89 which put her in the top 20 for the day. She and Levi Kuipers are the two seniors on the SWC trap team.

EHS state trap shooters (from left) Dalton Van Dyke, Jayson Delfs, Shania Mandersheid, Aaron Veldhuizen, and Tyler Van’t Hof.