By Sarah Greil

HARSHAW – The Harshaw Sports Club recently invited trap teams from schools all over Wisconsin for a unique shooting experience. 219 athletes from 13 teams took part.

High school and middle school students from the Tomahawk Claybusters traveled to Harshaw on Saturday, May 21 to experience skeet shooting, a form of trapshooting in which clay pigeons are thrown to simulate the flight of various game birds.

According to Coach Dan Winter, “Harshaw puts together probably the best sporting clays course in northern Wisconsin, if not all of Wisconsin.”

He believes that this shoot “really helps the athletes with their focus at a critical time in the season as we head into the conference tournament, and then on to state.”

Throughout the 12 stations, athletes experienced shooting at clays that simulated two birds flying in from different directions and rabbits scurrying out from bushes. They were able to sit in a boat and shoot at clays simulating ducks flying overhead. Each athlete ended up shooting 100 shells throughout the morning.

For the Men’s Varsity Division, Hudson Mattke took 6th place overall, Nathan Graeber took 21st and Blake Younker took 30th.

In the Men’s Intermediate Division, Caden Derleth took 12th overall, Hayden Greil took 15th and Conner Johnson took 20th.

In the Ladies Varsity Division, Khianna Vacho took 2nd place, Reese Marvin took 11th and Magdalene Lashua took 21st.

In the Ladies Intermediate Division, Alison Derleth took 9th place.

Overall, Tomahawk placed 6th out of 13 teams.

Conner Johnson, sixth grader and first year shooter, said his favorite part about the shoot was “having fun, seeing my friends, shooting and having a good time.”

He said the most difficult thing was “the clays going in all different directions in the woods and I didn’t know what to expect.”

Junior Nathan Graeber has been shooting trap for more than four years. He commented, “The most challenging part about Saturday is that you’re going in blind because it’s completely different. You have different stations, constantly different birds coming in at different angles, so you miss a lot. The thing I enjoyed about it the most is that you get to experience how different birds react and how they move around and how in real situations in hunting you can just miss a ton of birds.”

Despite the challenges some had never seen before, squads encouraged each other and celebrated one another’s accomplishments, no matter how small.

Upcoming trap shoots in June include the Conference Shoot-off in Mosinee and the State Competition in Nekoosa.

For more information about the Tomahawk Claybusters, visit “Tomahawk High School Trap Team” on Facebook.