Young Guns to Shoot for National Titles This Weekend in San Antonio
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Young Guns to Shoot for National Titles This Weekend in San Antonio





SAN ANTONIO — It all boils down to this.

After weeks of competition in skeet and sporting clays — two sports featured in a fast-growing youth shooting league now involving nearly 10,000 students in more than 40 states — national champions finally will be crowned this weekend.

The 2007 Scholastic Clay Target Program (SCTP) skeet and sporting clays national championships begin Saturday at the National Shooting Complex in San Antonio. An awards ceremony is slated for Sunday afternoon.

"Many of the country's top young talents will be here. In addition to vying for national titles, some of these shooters will be selected to attend an Olympic development camp in August, and some will go on to compete at the collegiate level," said Zach Snow of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), which developed and manages SCTP.

SCTP allows youths in grades 12 and under to compete as a team in the clay target sports of skeet, sporting clays and trap. State and national titles, scholarship money and, of course, trophies and awards are at stake. It's all designed to instill teamwork, responsibility, patience, focus, leadership and safe firearms handling.

SCTP has seen phenomenal growth since launching six years ago, and has been referred to as "the Little League of shooting sports."

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

Skeet is a clay target game, also an Olympic sport, in which targets are thrown from two trap houses. Shooters move from station to station in a semi-circle between the two houses. Depending on station, targets are singles or doubles. Each shooter gets 25 targets per round.

Sporting clays is designed to simulate field shooting. Courses are laid out in natural surroundings, much like golf, with shooters moving from station to station. Targets are typically presented in pairs. A round consists of 50 or 100 targets.

Trap, another Olympic sport, is named for the device that throws targets into the air. Targets are thrown at random angles, testing shooters at five different shooting stations. A round consists of 25 targets per shooter.

The trap national championship for SCTP will be held Aug. 5-7 at the World Shooting and Recreational Complex in Sparta, Ill.

SCTP is a cooperative effort between NSSF and the national governing bodies for trapshooting, skeet shooting and sporting clays — the Amateur Trapshooting Association (ATA), the National Skeet Shooting Association (NSSA) and the National Sporting Clays Association (NSCA).

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