Charles City/Nashua-Plainfield trap team rebuilding (and reloading)

By John Burbridge sports@charlescitypress.com

NASHUA — Some teams are rebuilding. Other are reloading.

The Charles City/Nashua-Plainfield trapshooting team is doing both.

“Last the whole year … you kidding me?” CC/N-P head coach Tim Laube said as his shooters were unloading a pick-up-bed-full of 12-gauge shells packaged in boxes— the team formed a line from the back of Laube’s truck to the storage area inside the Nashua Fish and Game Club clubhouse while passing the ammunition. It took nearly 15 minutes.

“I have five more pallets for the season,” Laube said. “This won’t get us to April.”

The team has been practicing at the club shooting range since the first Tuesday in March. Yesterday (March 13) provided perhaps the best shooting conditions so far with a bright and unobscured daylight-saving-time sun and a moderate yet somewhat challenging wind.

“We lost a lot from last season,” Laube said of the 10 seniors who have graduated. “I don’t think we’ve ever graduated that many seniors all at once before.

“We haven’t been able to make up those losses. We have about 26 on the team so far. This is going to be a rebuilding season for us.”

Though 10 have graduated from the team, half of them have continued with their sport in college.

“We have at least five who are still active in the sport,” said assistant coach Kevin Tierney, whose daughter, Rebecca, shoots for Simpson College.

Though trapshooting is not a sport you outgrow once you graduate from high school or college — Laube, Tierney and several other CC/N-P coaches remain competitive shooters — you can still outgrow your gun during formative growth-spurt years.

“A lot of kids grow from season to season,” Tierney said. “One of the first things we do is check to see if their gun is still correctly fitted … see if the length of their sight along the barrel has changed and needs to be adjusted.”

Laube says the team is right where he expects it to be this early in the season.

“We’re rusty … a lot of them haven’t shot for a long time,” he said.

Among the top returning shooters for CC/N-P are Bailee Bortz, Colby Gavitt, Marrisa Fuerstenberg, Ashton Lamborn, Carter West and Bobby Gipple.

The team is due to open the season, April 3 at an away meet at the Cedar Falls Gun Club. The first home meet will be the following Thursday (April 5) when the team hosts Osage at the N-P Fish and Game Club.