Merrill Bluejay JV Team brings home third place trophy from State Competition

BY TINA L. SCOTT
EDITOR

A bus filled with 51 Merrill Bluejay trap shooters traveled to Rome, Wis., on Friday, June 21, 2024, to compete in the Wisconsin Scholastic Clay Target Program (SCTP) Single Trap competition at the Wisconsin Trapshooting Association (WTA) Homegrounds/Shooting Complex. “It was downpouring rain when the bus arrived,” one of the coaches said. “Thankfully, the rain cleared and held off for most of our flights.”
At State, all the shooters on each team shoot their 100 rounds, with a time limit of one hour to complete, a coach said. “The top five scores are used for the Team results in each division. And then there are also Individual awards for the top shooters at each level.”
When the shooting had stopped, the dust had settled, and the points were tallied, Merrill’s Bluejay Trap Team made a pretty good showing. Most notably, the Merrill JV team brought home the third place trophy, out of 81 other JV teams at State, and Merrill’s top five sharp shooters helping secure that remarkable finish were Mason Meyer (97) of Merrill, Alex Petrowski (93) of Irma, Hunter Renken (92) of Merrill, Mathew Maas (90) of Gleason, and Lily Kufahl (87) of Merrill.
“Our top gun of the day was JV athlete, Mason Meyer,” a coach said. Top Merrill JV shooter Mason Meyer shot a 25 and three 24’s, and his final score of 97 out of 100 also put him in sixth place overall for individual shooters, just one bird shy of joining the “Top Five JV Males” - not bad considering that was sixth out of 353 total JV male shooters!
The Merrill Varsity Team placed 35th out of 89 Varsity teams competing, while Intermediate Entry (IE) placed 10th out of 71 IE teams competing, and the Intermediate Advanced (IA) Team placed 19th out of 70 IA teams competing.
During the event, in addition to Meyer (JV), Bobby Hoff (Varsity) and Bryce Bloch (Varsity) also shot a perfect score of 25 during one of their rounds. Quite a few Merrill shooters also shot near-perfect rounds with just one miss, with scores of 24: Mason Meyer (3)(JV), Landon Hipke (2)(Varsity), Robert Hoff (2)(Varsity), Alex Petrowski (2)(JV), Chris Holz (2)(Varsity), Hunter Renken (JV), Lily Kufahl (JV), Ben Schneider (Varsity), Eli Lofink (IA), Jase Steinagel (Varsity), Mathew Maas (JV), and Max Westover (IA).
Some fun facts from Bluejay Trap Coach Meyer: The State competition included 1,994 shooters, shooting nearly two million birds, using 70 ton of shot/BB’s and $680,000 worth of shells.
“Our team as a whole had a phenomenal year with our Conference season wins, showing up Bluejay proud for Conference and State Championship shoots,” coaches said.