St. Marys Sportsman’s Club host benefit shoot
ST. MARYS - The St Marys Area Sportsman’s Club hosted a benefit trap and skeet shoot that welcomed all shooters on Sunday.
The proceeds of this event will go toward paying for the Fox Township High School Trap Nationals. The people that attended the event could shoot and buy tickets for a raffle. Food was also served, but was included in the shooting fee.
Shooters from all over came to support the student-athletes that plan to go to nationals. They didn’t just help by adding to the money collected, but by also offering well wishes and support that they would shoot well at the event.
“I chose to come because it is for a good cause and it helps to support the students,” Greg “Hoser” Mahoney said.
Mahoney supports the shooters as much as he can and has attended events in the past. He was just one of many that came on Sunday to support the shooters.
The event was shooting 100 clay pigeons for the day. The shooters would shoot 25 pairs of trap targets and 25 pairs of skeet targets meaning that they would be shooting at 50 trap targets and 50 skeet targets. This is called doubles when instead of one bird a shooter has to shoot two at a given time.
The people that came to this event paid the entrance fee to shoot, but were then able to hold a competition to see who could hit the highest score of the day. The highest shooter for trap would receive two boxes of shells as would the highest shooter for skeet. The runner-up of trap and the runner-up of skeet each would win one box of shells.
Overall, the shooters put forth their best effort towards competing. The members of the team that are going to nationals were also there all day working hard to make sure it ran smoothly. They would keep score, fill the traps with targets so they could keep shooting, and do many other jobs.
“It is good to see the students get into it,” Corey Williams said.
Williams is another shooter that came to support the students by shooting that day. He was excited that so many students wanted to compete as they are the future of the sport, but was also glad that they were working as hard as they were.
Greg Valentine, another shooter that attended that day, said, “We are here to support the high school trap team as much as we can.”