The Lake Region Junior rifle shooting athletes performed exceptionally well this past weekend, June 3 and 4, at the State Smallbore Rifle Championship matches held in Grand Forks. The competitors’ fire .22 rimfire rifles at 50 yards from prone, standing, sitting and kneeling positions initially with 20 shots in each positon. This is followed by 10 shots from each of the 4 positions in that same order for a grand total of 120 shots fired.
Casia Steinhaus, Hannah Vaagen, Jacob Vaagen, and Rachel Vaagen competed in the 4-Position Championship. This match is open to both juniors and adults. The competition in this match was extremely tight. Casia earned first place in both the open and junior categories with her score of 1164 out of a possible 1200 with 47x. Hannah earned second place following Casia by only one point with her 1163 and 45x. One more point placed Tom Thompson in 3rd place with his 1162 and 53x. It doesn’t get much tighter at the top than that.
Following the 4P match, the shooting athletes fired the 200 yard prone match with 20 shots at that range from their .22 rimfire match rifles. Again, competition was very strong. Hannah Vaagen won this match last year and she repeated as match winner this year with a 197 out of a possible 200. This is the second year in a row that this match has been won by a junior shooter firing the match with open sights vs the adults firing with scoped rifle.
The shooting athletes competed on Sunday in the prone matches where Championships consist of a 40 shot match at 50 yards followed by a Dewar match with 20 shots from 50 yards and then 20 more at 100 yards. These two matches are followed by a 40 shot match with the target at 200 yards and then finally by a 40 shot match on a very difficult target at 50 meters.
Tom Thompson of Bismarck won the first match at 50 yards with a 400 and 25x followed by Hannah with a 399 and 26x.
Casia won the Dewar match with a 398 and 21x followed by Tyler Linneman with 398 but only 20x.
Casia also won the 100 yard match with a 399 and 16x followed by Tom Thompson with a 397 and 21x.
Tom Thompson won the 50 meter match with his 398 and 24x followed by Jacob Vaagen with his 395 and 21x.
Tom Thompson is the aggregate winner of the prone matches with his total score over all of the matches of 1591 and 96x. Casia Steinhaus fired a 1588 and 86x for second place overall and to win the High Junior trophy.
Jacob and Hannah teamed up to win the prone team match with their aggregate of 3156 and 158x.
It is a credit to these young shooting athlete’s determination and incremental effort over many years to attain the skill necessary to achieve performance at this level.
Casia, Hannah, Jacob and Rachel are all members of the Ramsey County 4H Shooting Sports as well as the Lake Region Shooting Sports Association.
