CC/NP Trap Shooters expanded their range this season

John Burbridge

sports@charlescitypress.com

CEDAR FALLS — Sunday’s weather for the final day of the Iowa Scholastic Clay Target Program State Trap Shooting Meet at the Cedar Falls Gun Club was ideal … if you wanted to go sailing.

If you wanted to hit clay birds bewitched by the steady cool wind confronting the firing line from the north … you had to deal with the added movement to an already moving target.

The Charles City/Nashua-Plainfield high school squads shot during the breezy Sunday morning.

“We did so-so,” CC/NP head coach Mike Oleson said while his crew was breaking down the team’s campsite near its assigned trap houses.

“The conditions were tough.”

Charles City’s No. 1 squad hit 443 out of 500 targets; CC’s No. 4 squad hit 442; and Nashua-Plainfield’s squad hit 441.

Among the top team scores late in Sunday’s session were from South Hamilton (453), the newly formed Butler County Shooting Sports (452), and a squad from Centerville (451).

The waning moments of the most recent meet was rather subdued compared to the finale of last season.

Then, the Varsity (HS) Male Singles championship was determined by a shoot-off which saw Charles City 2022 graduate Colton Crooks hit 49 out of 50 clays with his only miss coming from handicap range after hitting 200 of 200 during the standard round.

One of the greatest performances among high school state shooters was good enough for Crooks to outright claim the title, becoming the fourth state champion to represent the CC/NP team.

Crooks was the first CC/NP state champion who shot for Oleson, who clicked his heels in celebration at the time.

Though CC/NP didn’t field another state champion, it was a banner season in other ways for the program.

For the first time, CC/NP incorporated a middle school team. During Wednesday’s Intermediate Male Singles shoot at state, Nashua-Plainfield seventh-grader Lane Barlow placed fifth after hitting 190 of 200 clays.

Then on Thursday’s Female Handicap Singles shoot, Charles City junior Taylor Quade placed 12th after hitting 85 of 100 clays.

“It was the first time in seven years that a CC/NP shooter shot handicap,” Oleson said of Quade, who shot at her targets 25 yards from the trap house — 16 yards is the standard distance.

The CC/NP team also expanded its range from just trap shooting and competed in several sporting clays shoots this spring.

Sporting clays is often referred to as “golf with a shotgun” with shooters moving from station to station — liken to traversing links on a golf course — for a variety of different moving-target challenges.