Arizona crowns youth skeet champions

Young skeet shooters from across Arizona earned state titles – with many qualifying to represent Arizona at upcoming national championships – at the Scholastic Clay Target Program’s (SCTP) Commissioners’ Cup State Skeet Championships on April 12.

The competition was held at the Tucson Trap and Skeet Club and featured some of Arizona’s top young shooters in five divisions: varsity, junior varsity, intermediate advanced, intermediate entry and rookie.

Squads from the Ben Avery Clay Crushers (Phoenix area), Red Mountain Target Terminators (East Valley), Huachuca Hot Shots (Sierra Vista) and the Tucson SCTP Shooting Stars (Tucson area) finished in the top three in the various divisions.

For a complete list of results, visit www.azgfd.gov/sctp and click on the link for the Commissioners’ Cup skeet results.

SCTP, for youths in grades 12 and under, is a program of the National Shooting Sports Foundation managed in partnership with the national governing bodies for shooting sports: USA Shooting, Amateur Trapshooting Association, National Skeet Shooting Association and National Sporting Clays Association. In Arizona, the program is administered by the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

With remarkable growth over the past eight years, the program is considered “the Little League of shooting sports.” Some 8,000 to 9,000 students from more than 45 states are expected to compete this year. Arizona teams participating in the state title shoot qualified for the SCTP National Championships July 31-Aug. 5 at the World Shooting and Recreational Complex in Sparta, Ill.

The best of these young shooters could be selected to attend an Olympic development camp in Colorado Springs, and some will go on to compete at the collegiate level. For more information, visit www.azgfd.gov/sctp or www.nssf.org/sctp.