Our Ramsey County 4-H Shooting Sports club hosted the 2025 North Dakota State 4-H Air Rifle Championship here in Devils Lake on Saturday April 5, 2025. These young shooting athletes put on quite a show for their parents, “fans”, and coaches.
40 young 4-H shooting sports athletes from around the state competed representing 4-H shooting clubs from Cass, Pierce, Ramsey, Rolette, Stark-Billings, and McLean Counties. Those age 10 and younger competed from the bench, and the junior and senior 4-H athletes fired a 3-position match with their sporter air rifles. They all fired 60 shots for score from their air rifles at targets 10 meters distant attempting to hit a dot the size of the period at the end of this sentence in order to earn a 10.
19 beginners fired some impressive scores from the bench with Holly Brekhus finishing in first place followed by Kayla Whillock of Kenmare (Ward County) in second place. In a very tight match, our Ramsey County beginner’s team of Holly, Madison Rode and Saira Kalwar finished in second place 10 points behind Ward County’s top team score of 1618. Pierce County’s team followed in 3rd place with a 1591. Over half of the beginners fired scores of 500/600 or better. This is an outstanding performance for these young shooting athletes.
In the 3-position competition, the aggregate of the top 3 scores from the 4-person teams determines the team ranking.
Josie Brekhus fired a 3-position score of 500 to win the Junior Division by a very wide margin. With her winning score added to scores fired by Landon Larson and Rylan Pallanch, our Ramsey County Junior team earned 1st place with a total of 1182 followed by Ward County in 2nd place with 1110 points.
Our Master Ramsey County team of Brady Schuler, Lauren Stiven, Isaac Vaagen and Rachel Vaagen finished with the top aggregate in the 3-position team matches. Lauren Stiven fired the highest overall individual score fired in the match.
Brady, Lauren, Isaac and Rachel will represent North Dakota 4H in the 4H National Championship matches to be held in Grand Island, NE over the last week of June. We wish them all the best and hope that they have a lot of fun.
Overall, Ramsey County 4H enjoyed a very successful outcome. The Brekhus girls lead the beginner and junior divisions by a wide margin.
We enjoyed hosting the event and hope to see many of these young people at next year’s 4-H Shooting Sports State Championship.
