By Josh Chase, Staff Writer

When members of the Laker Trap Shooting Team arrived at the Minneapolis Gun Club Sunday to compete in the state championship tournament, many of them had never even met.

That the newly formed group would participate in the event was a nearly last-minute decision. To acting head coach Chris Hesch, the tournament would give the club’s 21-member roster a taste of things to come. So, imagine the surprise when Patrick Rose, a Prior Lake High School junior from Spring Lake Township, beat out a Minnetonka student in a tie-breaking shootout to take third place in the tournament’s junior varsity division.

“You couldn’t have scripted it any better than that,” says Hesch, who began piecing together the team in February, a few months after reading a newspaper article that said trap shooting was gaining popularity at Twin Cities-area high schools.Laker Trap Shooting Team member
Nick Conrad of Savage takes aim at
a clay disc during the state high
school trap shooting championship.
The event marked the team’s first
competitive event. (Submitted
photo)

Hesch became interested because his 14-year-old son Dan has long had an interest in the sport, in which participants shoot down clay discs with 12- or 20-gauge shotguns.

“He was the catalyst for me getting this started,” says the father. “His interest in hunting and trap shooting is just huge.”

As it happened, a lot of other area teens had a large interest, too. After coordinating with the high school’s athletic department, Hesch and the school district issued a bulletin to area parents to gauge interest and solicit members.

Hesch, who anticipated a small response – an initial membership of five to 10 students at the most, he thought – received more calls than he expected.

“My phone just didn’t stop ringing,” he says. “The response was just overwhelming. There was so much interest in it, I had to cut it off at 20 [students].”

After getting the go-ahead from the Minnesota Western Suburban Trap Conference, Hesch and the other parents decided to enter the state championship against seven other schools. Without a single team practice, the Lakers’ showing was – by all accounts – impressive. The junior varsity squad, for instance, took fifth place – just one team away from receiving a metal.

And then there’s Rose, the soon-to-be high school junior who took third place in his division. After shooting four rounds of 25 shots, Rose had hit 89 out of 100 clay discs. Tied with a student from another team, Rose then entered a shootout, in which each student would shoot five discs per round until one of them emerged victorious. In the first round of the tie-breaker, Rose’s opponent shot four out of five discs. When the Laker followed, he knocked five discs in a row out of the sky, taking the lead and the trophy.

“I loved it,” Rose said of the competition. “I thought it was great. I would love to be on the team next year.”

Whether that will happen, though, is still up in the air. Despite the team’s strong showing at the state championship, Hesch and his assistant coaches, Larry Stier and Scott Conrad, have yet to secure approval from the Prior Lake-Savage Area School District to officially form the team.

Over the next few weeks, the organizers will be working with high school Athletic Director Eric Rodine to design a proposal for the board, which will decide whether or not the team can move forward. Ultimately, Hesch says, he’d like trap shooting to become a sport in which students can earn letters.

If approved, the team will comprise 45 students competing over 10 weeks from April to June. In the first three weeks, the team will shoot two 25-shot rounds per week in order “to establish their average” – the figure used to determine their placement on novice, junior varsity or varsity squads, Hesch says. For three weeks following that, the team will have weekly practices, and in the three following weeks, it will compete against the 10 other schools expected to participate in 2010. In the final week of the season, students will compete in the conference meet and – if qualified – the state championship.

Tad Radtke of Prior Lake, is a hunting lover entering his junior year in high school. After years playing soccer as a child, he developed knee problems that limit the sports he can play. For Radtke, the Laker Trap Shooting Team is one of the few athletic activities he can take part in.

“Usually, during the summer and spring, I get home and can’t go anywhere because I can’t play a sport,” he says. “But now that we get to compete, I can get out of the house more.”

Radtke, who developed his love of shooting at a young age while on family hunting outings, says he looks forward to being active within the team.

“I hope that, first of all, we can get this going and I hope by next year to get a lot better,” he says.

If all goes well for Hesch, Radtke and his teammates will get that chance.

Hesch plans to file a formal new activity proposal in the coming weeks and hopes to seek board approval by the end of the summer. Still, he knows there will be challenges and admits that it could be a hard sell to have a shooting sport sanctioned by the school district.

“Not being an avid hunter myself, I think the misconceptions about youth and shooting have created a barrier,” he says. “But I hope to take that barrier down.”

Josh Chase can be reached at (952) 345-6375 or jchase@swpub.com.