The Ketchikan Junior Shotgun League competed in the Alaska Youth Education in Shooting Sports State Championship in Anchorage last weekend. The shooting events included American Trap, Doubles Trap, Wobble Trap, Sporting Clays, Doubles Sporting Clays and Skeet. Over 90 athletes from across the state competed in the event.
The eight-person Ketchikan team was made up of Oscar Brooks, William Hout, Evan Gunn, Ethan Kershaw, Thomad Rud, Autumn Elsner, Dawson Dethlefs and Abby Davies. Gunn, Kershaw, Hout, Davies and Elsner were all first-time AK YESS State Championship competitors.
Rud was named “Athlete of the Year,” and won the HAA (High Above All) Senior Varsity Champion award by total points. He also took second place in the Wobble Trap and third place in Doubles Trap events.
Brooks won the HAA SV Trap Triumphant title (all three trap events), and took first place in the Double Trap and third in the Wobble Trap. Dethlefs was the HAA Novice Champion in Sporting Supremacy (Sporting and Doubles Sporting Clays), while Hout took third place in Intermediate Skeet.
The KJSL team also took home the HAA Team Trap Triumphant award. The team had at least one shooter compete in each of the four divisions: Novice, Intermediate, Junior Varsity and Senior Varsity.
In an email to KDN on Monday morning, head coach Eric Eichner said that the individual awards won by his athletes are the most in KJSL history, and the team award is the first they’ve received in “several years.”
He also praised his team’s efforts, saying: “We are very proud of this group of kids. They are a fantastic group.”
He took time to thank volunteers Eryn Brooks, Ericka Rud and assistant coach Wally Rud, “for making it all happen,” and acknowledged the support of team sponsors Friends of NRA, MidwayUSA, Alaska Marine Lines and the Ketchikan Rod and Gun Club.
In a follow-up phone interview on Monday afternoon, Eichner explained that the record number in individual awards was due to two factors.
“We had more kids with more talent,” Eichner said. “In the past we’d have two, three, maybe four kids who would bring home all the medals. This trip we just had more kids with higher averages, normally we bring between four and six kids up, this time we had eight. So that also increased our possibilities in medaling, and the kids were just shooting well, too.”
*This article was originally published in the Ketchikan Daily News*
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