1,500 Youngsters Expected to Compete at World's Largest Shooting Competition
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1,500 Youngsters Expected to Compete at World's Largest Shooting Competition





SPARTA, Ill.―The world's largest shooting competition is getting a whole lot younger.

Around 1,500 youngsters from 26 states will converge on the World Shooting and Recreational Complex in Sparta, Ill., Tuesday and Wednesday for the Scholastic Clay Target Program's (SCTP) National Trapshooting Championships.

The team competition will kick off the world's largest shooting competition, the 107th annual Grand American World Trapshooting Championships.

"This is the Super Bowl of youth trapshooting," said Zach Snow of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), which developed and coordinates SCTP on the national level. "Teams have worked hard all year to get here, and this is their chance to show the rest of the country what they can do."

Last year, SCTP attracted a record 1,564 youths to Vandalia, Ohio, for the Grand, accounting for more than 25 percent of overall participation at the event.

SCTP, the nation's premier youth shotgun sports league, allows youths in elementary school through high school to compete as a team for national and state titles and for college scholarship money. Snow said the program "is designed to instill in participants safe firearms handling, commitment, responsibility, leadership and teamwork."

More than 8,000 youths from over 40 states are involved in SCTP. The program has experienced phenomenal growth over the past few years. Last year alone, the program saw a more than 50 percent increase in participation, not to mention an 84 percent increase in female competitors.

"Thanks to the hard work and commitment of volunteers around the country, SCTP’s success and popularity continues to skyrocket," Snow said.

SCTP teams from Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin will compete at next week's event.

This is the first year the Grand American will be held at the World Shooting and Recreational Complex in Sparta, Ill., located 58 miles east of St. Louis. The competition had been held in Vandalia, Ohio, since 1924 and various other locations before that. The recently opened Sparta complex, one of the most sophisticated shooting facilities in the world, covers more than two square miles with more than three times the amount of trap fields in Vandalia.
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