Trapshooters descend on Hub City for state tournament

More than 550 athletes from 32 teams descended on the Aberdeen Gun Club Saturday for the South Dakota High School Clay Target League state tournament.

In its third year, it was the largest state tournament to date, according to tournament and gun club officials.

Pierre took home the team title, upending two-time defending champions Platte-Geddes. Brookings was third behind individual champion Evan Koerner. Canton finished fourth overall, while Yankton was fifth.

Britton-Hecla was the highest finisher among area teams, coming in seventh overall. Aberdeen Central, in its first season, was 14th. Groton finished 20th and Aberdeen Christian was 28th.

The great equalizer

Trapshooting pays little to no regard to factors like age, gender or health.

Ask Britton-Hecla’s Hunter Neiber.

Leiber is roughly a month removed from surgery to repair a torn ACL in his right knee.

The injury — a freak post-prom incident — robbed the senior of his final golf season and a summer of baseball.

But it couldn’t keep him out of trapshooting.

“It means a lot,” Neiber said. “I had to quit golf for the spring season at school. That was not fun for me. That would have been my varsity season, my last year, a chance to go to state. Now that I’ve qualified for nationals in (trapshooting), it takes my mind off the other sports that I can’t play, like baseball. It would have been my last year for that, too. At least I can still trapshoot. That’s nice.”

After the injury, Neiber had to re-learn a sense of balance when it came to trapshooting.

Shooters typically put more weight on their front foot to shoot. As a left-handed shooter, that meant Neiber’s right leg — the leg he injured.

To compensate, Neiber taught himself to put his weight on his left foot and use his right to gently balance himself.

“It took a while (to learn),” he said. “I shot a lot of rounds right after (surgery). It wasn’t too hard to get that in my system to be able to stand and have my gun up enough to get it on the bird.”

It didn’t affect him much. Two weeks post-surgery, Neiber put up a perfect 25, and has had complete competition scores in the high 90s.

“I’ll probably just keep this stance, because it’s working for me now,” he said. “I don’t know. We’ll see what happens, I guess.”

Two perfects, one round

In three seasons of competitive shooting, no Bowdle shooter had ever recorded a perfect 25.

Aaron Lien and Corey Graff changed all that in the span of about 15 minutes.

Lien did it first, solidifying his spot in school history with the first round of 25. Graff followed just minutes later in the second half of the group’s round of 50.

Lien was visibly emotional after recording the feat in the first half of his second round Saturday afternoon.

“I was thinking, ‘OK, it’s now or never. I’m going to have to get this now, because if I don’t do it now, I’ll have to worry about it next year,’” he said.

Lien, who recently completed his junior year of school, said his hands became sweaty and shaky the closer he got to that final mark.

“I can’t believe I did it,” he said. “This must be a dream. I had to do something to make myself wake up.”

Graff, who witnessed Lien’s accomplishment during the first half of the group’s afternoon round, was similarly nervous during his turn.

“I was just trying to keep it off my mind,” he said. “That was my biggest problem.”

Graff said he was doing everything possible to stay calm, taking deep breaths before every shot. His previous best score during a 25-shot round was a 19.

“It boosted my self-confidence a lot,” he said. “It just means a lot to me.”

Perfect

Speaking of perfection, there was a bit of it going around Friday.

Four individuals recorded perfect 50s, while 29 total perfect 25s went in the books during the state shoot.

One of those 25s belonged to Warner’s Logan Fonder, who ran the table on the final round of his day.

“For me, I start shaking a lot, because I’m nervous,” Fonder said. “Trapshooting is a lot of mental. It’s about 30 percent shooting and 70 percent keeping your head in the right spot. Doing the same routine over and over and over again.”

It marked Fonder’s second career 25, the first coming during last summer’s youth league.

While he’s never recorded a 50, he has had back-to-back 24s.

Brookings’ Evan Koerner recorded one of those 50s — and back-to-back 25s — to put a 98 on the board on his way to the top spot on the leaderboard.

Resistance turned advocate

Two years ago, Torri Qualm’s mom did a thing.

She signed her daughter up for the school’s first trapshooting team. It was a move that was met with much trepidation (put mildly) and even more resistance (put bluntly).

In retrospect, Mom is forgiven.

“I did not want to do it at all,” Qualm said. “My mom signed me up and I did not want to do it. But I’m really glad I did, because it’s one of my favorite things to do now.”

Qualm is one of a large contingent of shooters from the Platte-Geddes squad participating in the South Dakota High School Clay Target League’s state tournament Saturday at the Aberdeen Gun Club.

Qualm, who grew up on a farm and has some hunting experience, said her trapshooting journey has not always been smooth, but she has come a long way from her initial resistance. In fact, she is now an ambassador of sorts for the sport.

“We love it,” she said. “We go around the school and tell people to come join. We’ve had a lot of people join up.”

So effective were her efforts, in fact, that the Platte-Geddes squad nearly doubled in size from year two to year three.

That doesn’t surprise Qualm, but something else did.

“It really surprised me that there’s 500-some people here today,” she said. “It’s crazy.”

Jumping ahead

Cole Simon’s first year in trapshooting wasn’t bad.

The 13-year-old, soon-to-be eighth-grader for Groton had averaged a 29.4 (out of 50) for the season.

Friday, he smashed that. Simon recorded a round of 45 during the morning shoot, putting up a 23 and a 22 in his first 50.

Simon said he couldn’t point to one specific reason for his success, but staying calm despite the understanding that this was one of his best-ever rounds was key.

“I was a little nervous,” he said. “I just had to take every clay one-by-one.”

Simon finished his day with a total score of 76.

Experience a plus for Bowdle shooter

Sam Frickson has been handling a gun since she was small. She’s hunted everything from deer to turkeys. Pheasants are a given. Geese too. Only the ducks are safe, but just because Frickson usually finds herself too busy during duck season to go find them.

So it was only natural that the Bowdle student would join the school’s trapshooting team when it began two years ago.

Since then, Frickson has seen the sport explode in popularity, and she, for one, only hopes it will continue.

“The first year, I don’t think there was even 10 teams (at the state tournament),” she said. “It was extremely small. It’s gotten huge since then.”

With more than 500 athletes participating in Saturday’s shoot, it was the largest state tournament in the three-year history of the sport.

And it’s one of the few activities that won’t interfere with Frickson’s already busy schedule.

“It’s really nice,” she said, “especially for me and the other kids who are in track. We shoot on Sundays, so there’s no interference with other sports.”

As an advocate of both the sport and hunting, Frickson said there’s a mutual benefit of one to the other.

“I think they both help each other,” she said. “Obviously, you get more practice shooting when you’re shooting 50 rounds every week. You get more practice for the pheasant hunting. But then the pheasant hunting, you have to be able to make those quick adjustments, which I think helps when we have those different (weather) days.”

The 2018 trapshooting season began in April in the midst of a lingering winter turned faltering spring.

All the better, Frickson said.

“You just have to adjust,” she said. “You have to know your gun and how it shoots and figure out, hey, the wind is blowing this fast, so I have to lead it that much. You just have to be able to adjust quick. You can tell the older kids are able to adjust to it faster and are able to consistently hit those higher numbers. The younger kids, when it’s a nice day, they’ll hit way more than they will when it’s cold and windy.”

Family talent

Cloe Swanson’s brothers are big trapshooters. Good ones too. So it took a bit before Cloe ramped up the desire to try her hand at one of the fastest-growing sports in South Dakota.

As it turns out, she’s not so bad herself.

“All my brothers are really good trapshooters,” Swanson said. “So it’s been a bit of a peer-pressure thing. But I love it. The first time I shot I got a 17 (out of 25). Then a couple weeks in I got my first 25. That felt pretty good.”

Swanson, a soon-to-be freshman at Canton High School, was in town for the state tournament Friday. She described the experience as fun, and herself as likely to return.

A hunter as well as a shooter, Swanson said there are slight differences between the two experiences.

“Trapshooting is more precision,” she said. “For hunting, you see it and then you’re like, ‘Oh, I’d better get it.’ In trapshooting, you know it’s coming. You know you’ve got to get on the bird right then.”

Swanson finished with a score of 86, fifth overall amongst female shooters. Her twin brother, Cole, recorded a 96, including two 25s, and tied for third overall.

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Team scores: 1, Pierre, 471; 2, Platte-Geddes, 468; 3, Brookings, 466; 4, Canton, 446; 5, Yankton, 445.

Local teams: 7, Britton-Hecla, 442; 11, Warner, 439; 14, Aberdeen Central, 433; 16, Bowdle, 431; 20, Groton, 422, 25, Redfield, 385; 27, Gettysburg, 364; 28, Aberdeen Christian, 346.

Individual scores: 1, Evan Koerner, Brookings, 98; 2, Hayden Litterick, Platte-Geddes, 97; T3, Erik Gutenkauf, Pierre, 96; T3, Aiken Crowley, Belle Fourche, 96; T3, Zane Cope, Hot Springs, 96; T3, Cole Swanson, Canton, 96; T7, Hunter Neiber, Britton-Hecla, 95; T7, Wyatt Rose, Pierre, 95; T7, Jadon Peterson, Platte-Geddes, 95; T7, Chad Lang, Britton-Hecla, 95;

T11, Nathan Sawtell, Yankton, 94; T11, Jackson Cramer, Warner, 94; T11, Jake Konechne, Belle Fourche, 94; T11, Hudson McLaury, Pierre, 94; T11, Miles Hubers, Platte-Geddes, 94; T 11, Carter Knecht, Pierre, 94; T11, Matthew Smith, Brookings, 94; T18, Ace Zorr, Harrisburg, 93; T18, Austin Schuelke, Milbank, 93; T18, Logan Heinzman, 93.

High Gun Varsity Male: 1, Evan Koerner, Brookings, 98; 2, Hayden Litterick, Platte-Geddes, 97; 3, Erik Gutenkauf, Pierre, 96.

High Gun Varsity Female: 1, Isabel Myren, Pierre, 91; 2, Katie Welker, Winner/Colome, 90; 3, Alexis Bultje, Platte-Geddes, 87.

High Gun Jr. Varsity Male: 1, Cody Larson, Brookings, 92; 2, Kordel Chmela, Chamberlain, 90; 3, Myles Kott, Platte-Geddes, 90.

High Gun Jr. Varsity Female: 1, Mckenzie Cope, Hot Springs, 85; 2, Kathryn Anderson, Belle Fourche, 84; 3, Delana Hankel, Mitchell, 81.

High Gun Novice Male: 1, Aaron Bieber, Bowdle, 89; 2, Aaron Lien, Bowdle, 87; 3, Cody Caraway, Brookings, 83.

High Gun Novice Female: 1, Kassidy Hansen, Chamberlain, 75; 2, Shay Kraft, Timber Lake, 71; 3, Sadie Rasmussen, Platte-Geddes, 71.