The preparation began while snow still covered the ground and now the time has arrived for hundreds and hundreds of shooters to take aim on state championships.

Youth from across the state will be competing in the annual South Dakota State High School Clay Target League State Tournament at the Aberdeen Gun Club Friday through Sunday. Numbers continue to grow in the sport.

“We’re expecting just a little less than a thousand kids in all,” said Jerry Brick, president of the gun club. “It’s up some from last year.”

Brick said he started to prepare for the annual event long before the temperatures began to rise.

“We started even before the snow was gone,” Brick said. “We were out there blowing out the range and trying to make it so the kids could get started in April.”

Now, the shooters will have to deal with warm conditions as they cap off their high school season.

“They’re going to have to stay well hydrated,” Brick said.

He noted that shooters can lose fluid just like athletes that run during competition.

“You would be surprised. There’s an amount of pressure that’s on you, especially in competition,” Brick said. “You’re trying to do everything right. It can definitely fatigue you.”

And the competition has gotten so intense, that one or two missed targets could spell the difference between victory and defeat.

“A missed target is a lost opportunity,” Brick said.

He added, “that just makes you sweat alone.”

The tournament is divided into skeet shooting and trap shooting. Brick said there is a major difference between the two.

“Trap is with five stands and you just shoot a box, you shoot five shots at a stand,” Brick said. “The targets are going away from you at some angles and straightaways, but they’re basically going away from you coming out of the trap house.”

He said skeet shooting is more like bird hunting.

“On the skeet there’s eight stations around an arch, between the high house and the low house, you’re shooting crossing shots primarily,” Brick said. “Shots can be coming at you or going away from you, and in crossing, you work your way around that arch. It presents you with a lot of different angles.”

The schools competing will be divided up according to number of shooters on each team and not the size of the school. For instance, Bowdle may have more shooters than Sioux Falls Lincoln, so it would be in bigger class, despite being significantly smaller in enrollment.

Competition will start each morning at 8 a.m. and wrap up around midafternoon.

There is a possibility that if the sport continues to grow, it could expand to another day.

“Right now in Minnesota, they’ve got over 9,000 kids that go to that tournament and it’s 11 days,” Brick said.

The Clay Target League is a club sport and not sanctioned, however as Brick pointed out, “The participants at Aberdeen Central and at many of the schools can letter in this.”

Brick said that league members do not need to qualify to compete in the state tournament, although not everyone chooses to compete in the event.

“Everybody that has been in the league, they’re all invited to participate and be a part of their team,” Brick said. “Some teams are going to have a lot of participants.”

While there have been weeks and weeks of preparation that has gone into preparing to host the state tournament, the event is also a highlight for the Aberdeen Gun Club.

“It’s just been a lot of work. We enjoy it,” Brick said. “We enjoy seeing the people come, and the kids shooting and everybody having a good time.”

There are 58 schools that will be competing in this year’s state tournament. Shooters will end up going through well more than 4,000 boxes of shells in practice and competition before the event concludes.

“It’s going to be just a fun weekend, hopefully for the kids and for the spectators, too,” Brick said, “and there’s going to be a lot of awards given out.”