NORTH CRAWFORD - The newly-formed North Crawford Trap Team willcompete for the first time in the spring 2018 season of the Wisconsin State High School Clay Target League.
The team is coached by Dave Benzing, owner of Outback Shotgun Sports in rural Seneca, and Jimmer Chellevold. The team’s safety officer is Jeff McCullick.
A total of 24 athletes have joined the team for the spring 2018 season. Twenty-two are returning athletes who shot with the team in fall of 2017, and there are two new members.
The team shoots on Tuesdays from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. “The kids who are not also in other spring sports come and shoot at 4:30, and then the kids who are in other sports come a little bit later,” Chellevold explained.
How does it work?
The trap shooting sport is open to both middle school and high school students. The sport is co-ed and open to both young men and women.
Student athletes shoot an assigned number of targets to compete in both individ-ual and team events.
Each week of the five week season, team members will shoot two sets of 25 clays. For that week their score will consist of two numbers, with a range of possible scores from 0-25.
A student can letter in the sport, based on their scores. The athlete’s year-end aver-age weekly score deter-mines student athlete classi-fications. Classifications assignments include:
Novice: 0-14.99 average per round
Junior Varsity: 15-18.99 average per round
Varsity 19-25 average per round
Every week, the league recognizes the highest scor-ing shooter, the highest scoring team, and the shoot-er with the longest string of targets broken in a row.
Local teams that will compete in the trapshooting league this spring include Boscobel, Prairie du Chien Seneca, Wauzeka-Steuben, Kickapoo, Westby, DeSoto, Weston and Wonewoc Center.
Conferences in the trap shooting league are determined by the size of the club, and not by geographic location. North Crawford will compete in Conference 7, which includes Bonduel, Denmark, Hillsboro, Lancaster, Southwestern, Superior and Waterloo High Schools.
The week of April 23-28 will be the first week of competition shooting. Up until now, the weekly shooting sessions have just been for practice.
Team record
North Crawford formed their team in the fall of 2017, but did not come together in time to participate in competition in that season. Most of the teams they’ll compete against in spring 2018 were active in other conferences in spring 2017 and have records.
Bonduel finished 2nd in Conference 6 with 3,231.5 total points; Denmark finished 1st in Conference 8 with 12,350 total points; Lancaster finished 1st in Conference 6 with 4,637 points; Superior finished 6th in Conference 5 with 1,769 points; and Waterloo finished 5th in Conference 7 with 2,469 total points. Hillsboro and Southwestern did not shoot in the spring 2017 season.
Other area schools that competed in the spring 2017 season finished as follows: DeSoto finished seventh in Conference 5 with 1,766 total points; Prairie du Chien finished fifth in Conference 9 with 6,145 points; Boscobel finished first in Conference 10 with 23,308 total points; Kickapoo finished first in Conference 1 with 446 total points; Wonewoc Center finished second in Conference 1 with 369 points; and Weston finished fourth in Conference 3 with 1,145.5 points.
Spring 2018 team
The roster for North Crawford’s spring 2018 team includes senior Cameron Steyer; juniors Gabe McCann, Gavin Schell, Gracie Babb, Grant Smith, Riley Chellevold, and Sandon McClurg; sophomores Grady Stovey and Matt Cody; freshmen Adam Robinson, Caleb Johnson, Chase Baumeister, Paxton Swiggum, and Raiden Steele; eigth-graders Beau Jelinek, Fay Brassington, Kaeden Chellevold, Keegan Bender, Sever Stoney and Wyatt Jones; and seventh-graders Deyton Blaha, Hunter Robinson and Satchel McClurg.
So far in two weeks of practice shooting, the topteam scores are as follows:
In week one 20 of 24 team members shot. Total team scores in the first round were 253, and 152. The top five scorers (not all athletes shot both rounds each week in practice) were Chase Baumeister – 80 points; Matt Cody – 69 points; Gavin Schell – 67 points; Gabe McCann – 65 points; and Grant Smith – 61 points.
Coach Chellevold described the teams strength as lying in the fact that most team members come from hunting families.
“The more they shoot trap, the better the shot they’ll be when they’re out hunting,” Chellevold observed.
Chellevold acknowledged that the greatest weakness the team has is their newness and lack of experience with competition.
The team goal, according to Chellevold, is for all the athletes to see weekly improvement in their scores, skill and confidence.
