Colfax Scholastic Pistol & Rifle Team competes in state match

STURGEON BAY — On June 10th 2017, 22 members of the Colfax Sportsmen’s Club’s Scholastic Action Shooting Team traveled to Sturgeon Bay in beautiful Door county to compete in their 3rd Wisconsin State Match.

The team competes in the Scholastic Shooting Sports Foundation’s action shooting program. In the program, athletes in grade school, middle school and high school compete in different divisions according to age, with either a 22 caliber rifle, 22 caliber pistol or center fire caliber pistol. Athletes under the age of 12 are only able to compete in the rifle divisions. The program is national in scope and Wisconsin has the largest number of athletes of any state organization.

In Action Shooting, four different arrays of targets, called stages, each consisting of 5 steel targets are shot. The time it takes to hit the targets is the shooters score and the best four of five attempts is the stage score. Because it is a team sport the athletes are part of squads. There are 4 athletes on a squad and the squad score is the cumulative times of all four individuals across all four stages. Being able to accurately and quickly shoot is mandatory and the Colfax Team is among the best.

The youngest athletes compete in the “Rookie” division with 22 caliber rifles. Our Rookie squad placed 1st and consisted of Kimberly Krista, Arianna Pickering, Nevan Nosker and Gabriella Affolter.

The athletes in middle school compete in the “Intermediate” division with two levels “Entry” for 1st year participants and “Advanced” for those with more than one year experience. Our Rimfire pistol Intermediate Advanced squad consisting of Will Wanish, Taylor Risler, Benjamin Affolter, and Craig Ervin took 1st place.

In the Rimfire Pistol Senior division Jr Varsity (for 1st year High School participants) was edged out by a talented Union Grove team by a slim 1.97 second margin! Oh so close! But a great showing by Marshall Reed, Gavin Wenz, Rowdy Kadinger and Kali Risler.

In the centerfire pistol Senior Varsity division the Colfax team placed 2nd to an extremely experienced Lake Country team. The LC team had 2 squads at the national championship last year and they placed 1st and 3rd. The squad that won WI state this year was essentially the reigning national champions. Our squad consisted of James deLambert, Brandon Helland, Ethan Leach and Jackson Zunker. Of note, the fastest individual in the centerfire division last year posted a 41.80 second aggregate time, James deLambert posted a 37.89 to be the fastest pistol shooter at the Wisconsin State match.

If a team has too few athletes to fill a squad with people all in the same division, they are combined into a squad of mixed division athletes or “Open” division. We had a squad of 4 in this Open division shooting rimfire pistols. They were Keharron Bogstad, McKenna Yingst, Nokomis Nosker and Trevor Rothbauer. Of the nine (9!) squads in this open division, our squad placed 1st. By a margin of 1.59 seconds.

We also had Nathaniel Nosker shooting on a squad of one in 22 caliber rifle as he was the only athlete on our team in his division. While he shot alone, he shot very well!