Even though I have been home for a couple days, thoughts of the Western Regional Junior Clay Target Championship are still fresh in my well-traveled mind.
Now me, I am just Mom, I am present to provide logistics and support. All the hotel accommodations, vehicle concerns, financial stuff, and food are my realm. I make sure everything in background is lined out, wrangle friends and family (and occasionally run interference with parents for the hubs), and enjoy the show.
The hubs (coach) and the boy do all the hard work.
But, before I got into that, I think a bit of explanation is in order. The Western Regional is a youth shotgun competition. It takes place over three days, and this year I got to watch over 400 kids blast clay targets out of the sky. The first day is devoted to sporting clays.
If you haven't shot a round of sporting clays, I highly recommend that you do so! It's kinda golf-like. You walk from station to station and shoot a series of clays from each station, until you have shot 100 times, which is a round of sporting clays. One of my favorite stations is where a tiny clay bounces across the ground like a little rampaging rabbit!
The second day was skeet, which is 8 stations of clays coming out of the high and low houses at blazing speeds, and the final day is trap, which is five stations of five shots all coming from the trap house in front of the competitors.
All in all, it is a great sport that has no age limit. I've watched people at ATA shoots from 8-80 shoot trap, it's a good time.
Although, it can get expensive, but honestly it doesn't have to be. You can pick up a halfway decent over/under 12 gauge shotgun, the proper chokes, and go have yourself a good time at your local range, with range fees being bearable if you are a member of your local club.
However, you can also spend more than the cost of a new car on a custom Kreighoff and be all fancy, and honestly once you get to the level that my son is now competing at, a competition gun is a must.
But that's another tale entirely.
Overall, the kids on our team (all four of them), did a fantastic job. There were medals galore, and two of our kids had never competed in a big competition before, one of them even shot a perfect round in trap (25 straight) and earned his first 25 patch.
This morning I reserved a rental car for mid May while the hubs booked our hotel in Boise for the Idaho State Youth Shotgun competition. The boy is determined to win the whole shebang this year. I am beyond proud of him already and am being as supportive as I can possibly be.
I'll even be there wearing my new custom sweatshirt that says mom on the hood. You know, because moms do that sorta stuff.
And on that note, I've still got post trip laundry to do! In my next post I will write about what we did in Vegas to celebrate completing the shoot!
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's slightly gritty and as of yet not used as a clay in any sort of shoot iPhone.