Photo by Mike Lamb

MARSHALL — Five years ago, Nick Atcher was just looking for something fun to do with his friends.

Karter DeSmet loves hunting.

On Wednesday night, the two Marshall High School students were preparing for one of most important competitions in their athletic careers in the most popular sport in the state of Minnesota.

Neither of them were wearing a baseball cap. There were no football helmets or hockey sticks in the general vicinity.

They stood behind their teammates who were practicing on the grounds of the Redwood River Sportsmen’s Club about 10 miles east of Marshall. Atcher and Desmet are just two of more than 12,000 student athletes participating in the 2018 spring Minnesota State High School Clay Target League. No other high school sport comes close to that number in student participation.

Both Atcher and DeSmet joined their teammates at the sportsmen club to prepare for the upcoming Minnesota state tournament.

“I feel like I’m shooting good going into it,” Atcher said. The sound of shotgun blasts could be heard as he spoke. “I think I’m ready for it.”

DeSmet uses the same strategy in clay shooting that he uses in hunting pheasants or ducks.

“Just don’t miss,” he said.

Neither DeSmet or Atcher have a problem with missing their targets. Both are considered leaders on the team. Atcher has been on the team since his seventh-grade year. That was the team’s first ever year in competition. In fact, the Minnesota State High School Clay Target League was in its early growing stage. The Minnesota High School Clay Target League started in 2008 with three teams and 30 students, but it has been exploding in participation ever since.

Today, high school leagues have formed in most states, with popularity also soaring Minnesota’s neighboring states of Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota and North Dakota.

“There is a lot of passion by the people in the state,” Don Atcher. He has coached his son, Nick, and the rest of team the past couple years.

“It’s a very large sport and it’s growing in every state. South Dakota, this is only their second year having a high school target league and they had a thousand students this year, which is double from last year,” Atcher said.

The Marshall team is actually down 20 shooters from last year’s high of 80. In a league where teams are placed by the number of shooters instead of geographic location, that decrease dropped Marshall into a smaller-sized conference. But Atcher doesn’t feel that trend will continue.

“We got community support. We got a lot of new shooters this year. We have seventh- and eighth-grade shooters and we know we will pick up some more. Some kids just had other things going on,” he said.

Possibly one of the big advantages the sport has over others is that everybody on the team shoots and competes. The shooters are divided into three categories — varsity, junior varsity and novice.

“There are no tryouts,” Don Atcher said. “If you come, you get to shoot trap. All the kids on the team are seventh through 12th grade. It doesn’t matter your background. It does cost money to put this on and there are fees. Families have to pay for the children to shoot, but it’s inexpensive. This past year, for the whole season, it was $135 plus the school fees. There were some raffle monies that helped with their rounds, the plays, the jersey, membership to the trap club.”

The competitors also need to use their own shotguns, either 12-gauge or 20-gauge.

Like any sport, Atcher says lots of practice is required.

“You have to be here even when you feel bad,” Nick Atcher said. “You come out to shoot when it rains. You shoot when it’s snowing.”

DeSmet has easily picked up the sport and became one of the better shooters on the team. But he too said you have to put in the work to be consistently competitive.

“You learn responsibility out here,” he said. “You have to show up on time. Put in your hours to be good.”

That work has paid off for the Marshall team with a first-place finish last week in the inaugural Big South Conference Trap shoot in Fairmont. The team also finished second in their conference. DeSmet was the top shooter in the conference, finished third in the state and made the all-Minnesota team. Derrick Van Overbeke finished in the top 100 in the state.

Looking back, Nick Atcher says he’s proud of what he and his teammates have accomplished in the first five years of the program.

“I’m shooting above my average, which is 23 and a half. I’m fine with that. That’s top 200 in the state,” he said. “I started in my seventh-grade year and I’ll be a senior this coming year. When I first started, I really didn’t know what to expect. I just came out because I thought it was fun. Something fun to do with my friends. Once I figured out I could do it, and see that, I started to enjoy it. And that’s when I started to really commit to it.”

The past three years have been productive for DeSmet as well.

“I shot competitions my first year. I didn’t do too good in those, but my next year after that I started winning a bunch. Now this year I’ve been winning every one of them,” DeSmet said.

Both are looking forward to the state tournament.

“It’s the biggest shooting event in the world,” Nick Atcher said.