Nearly 1,000 high school shooters will be competing in the South Dakota Clay Target Trap and Skeet Tournament Friday through Sunday at the Aberdeen Gun Club.

Aberdeen has hosted the state tourney ever since the sport’s inception in the state.

Aberdeen Gun Club President Jerry Brick believes it’s because of the club’s setup.

“I think it has to do with our facilities. We have the skeet fields that they’re looking for. We have the trap fields, there’s only a couple other clubs in state that have that many fields,” Brick said. “So it just works out good for them. We have enough room for people to come in, and hopefully Aberdeen has enough rooms for everybody.”

Competition will take place in skeet all three days, and trap on Saturday and Sunday.

Brick explained the difference between the two shooting events.

“The skeet shooting is done from a high house and a low house. They’re just shooting around an arch in eight positions, so primarily it’s crossing shots, doubles shooting, just quite a bit more challenging, especially for newcomers,” Brick said. “But once you catch on, you get that muscle memory going and you’re able to lead those targets.”

Trap shooters take aim at targets that are moving away from them.

“On the trap, you’re shooting from five positions, and shooting basically targets going away from you,” Brick said. “There’s angles, but they’re going away from you.”

While shooters can compete in both events, there are way more trap shooters than skeet shooters. Brick said that shooting skeet takes quite a bit longer to complete.

“Skeet moves much more slowly than what trap does, so it takes much more time to complete a round, complete a full 100 targets that these athletes are shooting,” Brick said, “so we’ll be shooting skeet all three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.”

While Brick said that the number of high school shooters has fluctuated a bit, the total number of those competing in this year’s state tourney is up from a year ago.

“Overall, we’ve got more shooters that have signed up this year than we had last year,” he said, “so that’s always a good sign.”

One of the teams that has shown a dramatic increase this year is Aberdeen Roncalli, which will now compete on Sunday against schools with the most shooters.

“They’ve really come on,” Brick said, “starting from a very small group of shooters a couple of years ago to really having a very competitive team now.”

The tourney is divided into two classes, but unlike other sports it has nothing to do with a school’s total enrollment. It is all based on the amount of shooters within each school, so for instance Bowdle has competed against schools with a much larger enrollment simply because they have a large number of participants.

Brick said the shooting ability for the kids continues to increase with some of the top shooters hardly missing any targets in a round of 100.

“The kids just automatically seem to get better,” Brick said. “When a lot of them start out they post some really low scores and after the seven-week period that we are running this, I’m not so sure that I’d want to compete against some of them.”

A combination of mental toughness and muscle memory are keys to being an accurate shooter.

“You have to just turn off everything and take one target at a time. Some people can do that, some can’t,” Brick said. “It’s all part of hand-eye coordination, and we’ve got some really tough shooters out there.”

While the sport continues to grow in South Dakota, it is still dwarfed by Minnesota, where the sport got its origins, according to Brick.

“We’ve had youth programs, but never anything like this in South Dakota,” Brick said. “This whole thing started in Minnesota, I’m going to say 20 years ago, and right now where South Dakota is going to have close to a thousand athletes participating in this, Minnesota will probably have somewhere around 10,000. It’s like a 9-day tournament there to try to get everybody through.”

There is no admission to attend this weekend’s state tournament, but Brick advised to bring some hearing protection because each day will be filled with plenty of gunshots going off.

“All shooters are required to wear eye protection and ear protection,” Brick said. “When you come out to watch, it’s probably a good idea to have something to put in your ears. And if you don’t bring anything with you, we do have them in the clubhouse.”