Tusky Valley Crush finishes in top 10 in the nation

The Tusky Valley Crush clay shooting team has been aiming high ever since it was formed six years ago. The fledgling team has steadily grown in numbers, experience and status.

In the parlance of clay shooting, to crush the clay is to shoot it so spot-on that it disintegrates. That goal gave birth to the team name, the Crush.

In July the Crush placed 10th in the high school division at the Scholastic Clay Target Program’s national championship, where they competed against more than 400 national teams.

“The SCTP nationals is the holy grail of trap shooting,” said Todd Harpst, one of four coaches for the Crush. “It’s the program that feeds the U.S. Olympics team, and colleges recruit from students who compete there. They are the cream of the crop.”

Harpst is proud of the 12 students who competed nationally. “We were actually in first place for the first three days,” he said. “We set the bar, and as the more elite teams started competing, we started to move down, and we expected that. But for a while, we were at the top of the pile.”

Prior to this year, Harpst said the team had only participated in the Tri-County Trap League as a club team.

“This is the first year we were able to compete as an official high school team,” he said. “We’ve grown to the point where we now compete in multiple leagues as members of the Ohio State High School Clay Target League.”

Students on the Crush team compete primarily in American singles and handicap trap shoots.

This year the Crush sent 18 shooters to compete in the Ohio State Championship at Black Wing Shooting Center near Columbus, finishing second in the Class 1A Conference after a tiebreaker.

The home field

The Bolivar Sportsman’s Club on Strasburg Bolivar Road is home field to the Crush. “They are our biggest supporter,” Harpst said. “They don’t charge us to use their range for practices and team events. They give us a discount price on targets. They don’t even charge us for the electricity we use when we shoot there.”

Additionally, Harpst said the sportsman’s club makes a financial donation to the team each year. “We have three other coaches who are members of the club and who donate their time,” he said, referring to Wayne Rex, Paul Ackerman and Dean Miller.

The team hosted its first league competition this year at the Bolivar Sportsman’s Club after joining the East Ohio High School Clay Target League.

“So we had shooters from Carrollton, Harrison Central and Buckeye Trail high schools come here to compete,” Harpst said. “Every kid got to shoot 100 targets, and we took the five best scorers, and that’s who got to compete. Buckeye Trail won, and we came in second.”

A growing team requires more funding

Fielding a clay shooting team of 22 students who travel and compete in multiple leagues takes money, and the Tusky Valley Crush has to raise all its dollars.

“Ammunition is expensive. Targets are expensive,” Harpst said.

Then there are registration fees and other expenses for a team that shoots 11 months a year.

At the end of this year, Harpst said the costs totaled around $45,000. To raise that much money, the Crush holds multiple fundraisers each year and hopes to keep adding sponsors.

“We do a sponsorship campaign each year in September,” Harpst said. “We have different program levels with different levels of recognition for sponsors. We try to raise as much money as we can so the kids don’t have to pay anything, because frankly, that would leave out some of the students who wanted to join.”

Gun safety is paramount to the sport, so students are required to take safety training before they are allowed to shoot.

The Crush practices at the Bolivar Sportsman’s Club every Thursday at 6:30 p.m. “Any Tusky Valley student who is in the sixth grade or higher is welcome to join.

Harpst said he is looking forward to seeing what the students will be able to do this year. “They are so energized after shooting against the country’s best high school trap shooters this year. I told them, ‘You had a top 10 finish this year nationally. Now people know who you are.’”