Nicholas Coppage of Queen Annes County High School in Maryland won the USA High School Clay Target League National Championship on Sunday, July 13th. Coppage edged out a field of over 1,800 registered high school students competing for the title of National Champion. The young man shot a perfect 100-straight, and then survived a shoot-off with 20 other athletes that also shot perfect scores in the Sunday’s competition. Brianna Helsene of South Prairie High School in North Dakota claimed the title of the top female clay target shooter in the nation, after shooting a perfect score and also winning a shoot-off. New York’s Beaver River Central High School won the team title in the event, coming out ahead of 260+ other high school clay target teams with a score of 494 out of 500. The event held at the Michigan Trapshooting Association in Mason, MI and featured 3,000 athletes participating in team and individual qualifying events. The League is the only 100% school-approved clay target shooting sport program in America. Tens of thousands of dollars in scholarships are provided to qualifying seniors by the League and post-secondary institutions each year. The League is the safest sport in school, with not one reported injury since the inception of the League in 2001. Each athlete must complete firearm safety certification before participation.
Locally in the Monmouth/Galesburg area, a Western Big Six Conference school made Sunday’s final, with Quincy finishing in 37th place. Local schools that participated in Friday’s preliminaries but not making it to Sunday’s final, included Canton High school in 93rd, the A-Town/North Fulton co-op in 95th, Brimfield in 120th, Geneseo in 167th, West Prairie in 177th and Rushville/Industry in 225th. Individually, Roger Olson from West Prairie High School placed 85th to claim the highest finishing local shooter. North Fulton’s Weston Tessier placed 334th in the individual preliminaries to lead the A-Town/North Fulton team. Zyler Combs’ 94 led A-Town students, as he placed 527th out of 1,480 total shooters.
For more information on the League and results from the National Championship, click HERE
