Good Kids Doing Well In A Sport

[MikeBjerum]

http://www.startribune.com/sports/outdoors/98150509.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUycaEacyU

Girl with a gun loves to pull the
trigger

 
Dennis Anderson, Star Tribune

KayCee Nelson is left-eye dominant but a
righthanded shooter.

A White Bear teen is in her zone as a
competitive trapshooter.

By DENNIS ANDERSON, Star Tribune

Last update: July 10, 2010 - 9:32 PM

ALEXANDRIA, MINN.

When Ron and Tammy Nelson finally heard
 
their only child say, "Get me a gun," they
couldn't have been happier.

This was a couple of years back, when their
daughter, KayCee, was about 14.

For most of her young life, KayCee had been
a figure skater, winning two state
championships and competing in the junior
nationals.

But after nearly 10 years of year-round
pirouettes, she was worn out. "She said, 'I'm
just tired of it,'" her mother recalled.

At the time, KayCee had recently completed a
firearms safety class, held at Metro Gun Club
in Blaine, and with her Department of Natural
Resources hunting certification came a trial
membership to the club.

Soon, attempting to break clays on Metro's
trap range, KayCee found she liked shooting
more than skating.

Which was OK with her parents. "The skating
thing was costing us about $1,500 month,"
Ron said.

In retrospect, the shift from skater to
shooter was natural, because KayCee has
always enjoyed being outdoors with her dad.
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When she was just 3, she started
accompanying him to the duck marsh or the
pheasant field.

"I like everything about hunting, particularly
bird hunting," she said, "whether it's for
pheasants, ducks, grouse or turkeys."

Now she likes everything about trapshooting,
too.

"I just love to pull the trigger," she said.

Doing just that was particularly enjoyable for
her Thursday morning at the State Shoot,
sponsored by the Minnesota Trapshooting
Association (MTA).

About 750 shooters are competing in the
weeklong tournament, which concludes
Sunday, and which, not incidentally, will
pump some $500,000 into the state's
economy.

Already crowned the reigning Minnesota
state high school trapshooting champion --a
title for which boys as well as girls compete
--KayCee on Thursday broke a perfect
100x100 clays, a mark that can elude even
some of the nation's best shooters for years
-- if not forever.

 
"When I got to 85 straight, I was shaking,"
she said.

Once before, this spring, to win the high
school title, KayCee busted 99x100. But
Thursday was the first time she ever ran 100
in a row.

"My parents have been real supportive in my
shooting," she said. "Dad was the one who
brought me to the gun club first to see if I
could hit anything. Since then, he's taken me
around the state to compete, and he reloads
my shells, which is important, because this
week [in Alexandria], I'll shoot about 1,500
rounds.

"Everyone says I'm the son my dad never
had."

• • •

As KayCee spoke, not far away stood Mark
Zauhar, a key player in the attempt by
thousands of Minnesotans -- some more
actively engaged than others -- to ensure
that hunting and particularly the shooting
sports continue to thrive in the state.

Hailing from a hotbed of national and
international trap, skeet and sporting-clays
dead-eyes, Minnesota gunners have for g
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enerations outshot most other competitors
from most other states, most of the time.

Bob Monson, for example, of Howard Lake,
last year won the handicap at the Grand
American trapshoot in Ohio -- a title to
which countless thousands of wingshooters
have aspired but rarely achieved.

Zauhar is himself an All-American
trapshooter and has a daughter whose aim is
to shoot on the U.S. Olympic trapshooting
team.

But Zauher's broader charge as the MTA's
long-running president is to get kids
interested in shooting, an effort that -- with
the help of many others -- is bearing fruit.

"This year at the high school meet, we had
243 shooters, and last year there were 141,"
Zauhar said. "It's catching on."

Some schools have been reluctant to allow
students and their parents to organize
shooting teams because -- noting the
obvious -- guns are involved. Yet most
administrations and school boards are won
over once the facts are laid out.

"Kids who shoot learn responsibility," Zauhar
said. "They also learn how to compete. And
 
they're with adults when they shoot. I've shot
all over the country, and the one thing you
see about kids who shoot is that they're
good kids. They're better in the end for
participating."

• • •

KayCee is one of a small number of students
at White Bear Lake High School who shoots
competitively.

"It doesn't bother me, I've always been a little
different," she said. "I've never been a preppy
type of girl."

Within a year or so of beginning her new
sport, KayCee started to regularly break 20
or more clays in a round of 25. A while
longer, and she busted 25x25 consistently.

Not bad for someone who has never
attended a shooting clinic, or even been
coached by anyone, except her dad.

"He taught me how to hold a gun," she said.
"But a lot of this you have to work out for
yourself. I watch other people and learn from
that. And other shooters offer their help."

KayCee said she can now outshoot her dad
in a duck blind or a pheasant field, a
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declaration Ron Nelson seemed not quite
ready to agree with, yet.

Regardless, the two hunt together far and
wide. "I've got one turkey -- a Merriam's --
to go to get my grand slam," she said. "And
we've hunted pheasants here and in
Montana, and I shot an antelope in Wyoming."

By now, mid-afternoon Thursday had come
and gone in Alexandria, and KayCee realized
she had yet another round of clays to shoot.

"I gotta run," she said, and within minutes
was shouldering her Beretta 682, and calling
for a bird.

As she said: She loves to pull the trigger.

Dennis Anderson •  danderson@startribune.
com

GETTING INVOLVED

Interested in getting your son or daughter
into competitive shooting? Contact Jim at the
Minnesota State High School Clay Target
League, 763-559-4940. Or go online at 
mnclaytarget.com.

 

[fightingquaker13]

A good story, and one written by a reporter with an agenda. I wish there were more like him.
FQ13

[MikeBjerum]

A good story, and one written by a reporter with an agenda. I wish there were more like him.
FQ13

Dennis Anderson is brother to Ron Schara who is know for Minnesota Bound (produced under other names for national distribution, and Back Roads With Ron and Raven (Outdoor Channel), and Ron's daughter produces Due North Outdoors for Fox Sports North.  Quality outdoor journalism runs in this family.  Too bad that Dennis' career has not taken off like his brother's!