CC/NP trap shooters lose their hats while hosting meet against WSR

By John Burbridge

sports@charlecitypress.com

NASHUA — Back in the golden era of television where everything was in black-and-white, the leading-role deadeyes in all those Wild Western-based TV shows had a penchant for shooting the black hats off the heads of their adversaries.

If you so happen to be a resident deadeye on the Charles City/Nashua-Plainfield trap shooting team, it’s your hat that’s in danger of being riddled with holes.

The team has a tradition of confiscating head wear from members who record their first perfect 25-of-25 round achieved in competition during their high school careers. The hats end up being tossed up in the air before being obliterated by the team’s firing squad.

After Tuesday’s home meet against Waverly-Shell Rock at the Nashua Fish and Game Club, Charles City freshman Wyatt Schradle and Nashua-Plainfield student Nick Brase both had their hats executed due to their first-ever perfect rounds.

Charles City senior Colton Crooks knows the drill. He lost his hat in the first meet of his freshman season.

An accomplished hunter before reaching high school, Crooks had already developed the skill of hitting moving targets. In that first meet, Crooks nearly went 50-of-50 — shooters at standard meets compete in two rounds of 25 — hitting the first 47 clays of his high school career while ending up with a 49 score.

Crooks eventually achieved a 50-of-50 score his freshman year, but hasn’t had one since when you exclude a 99-of-100 performance achieved during a makeshift fall season.

“I thought I would have more (50-of-50s) by now,” Crooks said on Tuesday after he shot another perfect 50 to lead all shooters during the meet.

The conditions were not ideal as shooters had to contend with a blustery wind. But it didn’t seem to bother Crooks.

“The clays were moving a little,” Crooks said of the knuckleball movement of the targets slung headlong into the breeze. “You just got to shoot a little quicker and focus more.

“Yeah, it is nerve-racking when you’re getting close to a perfect score. You just have to think, ‘I only got five more left’ and go from there.”

With Crooks’s 50, Schradle’s 43 — he bounced back from an 18-of-25 first round — Carter Burkhardt’s 45, Cole Cross’s 44 and Brayton Quade’s 42, Charles City’s “No. 1 squad” won the meet with a team score of 224.

WSR Black, led by Cash Cline, Tyler Resor and Kaelan Smith, who all shot 46s, placed second (222).

WSR Gold, led by Lucas Hawes’s 45, was third (209).

Brase, who shot on N-P’s lone squad, placed second among the male shooters with a 47. Resor bested his teammates in a shoot-off for third place.

Gabrielle Sager, shooting with WSR Yellow, was the top female shooter with a 41.

Charles City’s Mallory Van Fossen and Taylor Quade, and WSR’s Brynn Schrage all shot 35s for the next best female score.

In the subsequent shoot-off for second place with the line of fire moved back to 20 yards from the trap house, Van Fossen missed four of her first five shots but rallied late to eventually hit 35 of 50 from that distance to earn second place.