Youth shooters take aim at Grouse Ridge

WASILLA — Jake Turtle’s Sunday best doesn’t show in a church, but in his sanctuary at the Grouse Ridge Shotgun Shooting Club sporting clays range.

Turtle dons a pink bow tie, black sweater-vest and aviator-style shooting glasses to fire his shotgun.

Turtle was among more than 70 young shooters to participate in the Scholastic Clay Target Program State Championships hosted by Grouse Ridge last weekend. Youth shooters competed in trap, skeet and sporting clays over the course of the three-day event. Six teams from Southcentral and Southeast Alaska gathered at the Wasilla-area range in what for many was the only shooting competition of the summer.

The event has grown rapidly. Last year, only teams representing Anchorage and Wasilla competed in the SCTP championships. This year, 71 young shooters fired rounds during the competition.

Turtle is the most recent Valley shooting prospect. The 17-year-old Wasilla resident enters his senior year of high school with highly regarded coaches taking notice of his talent. Turtle has finished ninth and 11th at the National SCTP Championships and earned an opportunity to train with Olympic coaches in Dallas, Texas, last year, as well as Cody, Wyo., this summer.

On Sunday, Turtle’s shotgun made his bow tie look even better. Turtle broke his personal best of 93 with a score of 96 clay targets, good enough for first place in the senior varsity division.

“You look good, you shoot good. I went out and proved that,” Turtle said.

Turtle’s promise follows the success of Alaskan shooters who got their starts at SCTP. Corey Cogdell is a former SCTP shooter. Cogdell was born in Palmer and won bronze in women’s trap at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Anchorage’s Blake Hughes earned a full-ride scholarship to Lindenwood University in Missouri with his shooting ability, and last year was the national runner-up in sporting clays. Lindenwood is the shooting sports powerhouse of the collegiate ranks, having won national championships nine years running. Hughes spoke at Grouse Ridge at the start of the competition. Lindenwood is also on the wish list for Turtle.

“Alaskans have made a name for themselves,” said Turtle’s coach, Neil Moss. “We have some very good shooters up here, and it could get even bigger now that high schools are involved. (Turtle) is not the only gifted shooter, he’s the oldest one. We have some others coming up that will be a force to be reckoned with.”

Turtle nearly missed the opportunity to pursue his talent with a shotgun. Last October, Turtle survived a car wreck at 90 mph, but sustained severe whiplash that threatened his shooting career.

“If it wasn’t for my team, I wouldn’t be here,” he said. “They were the ones who kept encouraging me. Even though you shoot for your own scores, when we shoot, we function as a team. I couldn’t do it without those guys behind me.”

The Valley shooting community has grown tremendously in recent years, Turtle said.

“Four years ago when I joined the Rangers, there were 10 kids. Now our team has 40 kids, and we have almost 100 at this event. That’s tremendous,” he said.

The Mat-Su Borough School District recently heard a proposal for shotgun shooting to become a high school sport. It’s not yet sanctioned, but could be within the next few years. School board president Mike Dunleavy originally struck up a conversation with Moss, interested in how to extend the sport to MSBSD high school students.

“This is a good opportunity for kids to get involved. Gun safety is a big deal here in Alaska with the amount of people who hunt. It is currently not a letter sport, but as interest builds that is the goal,” Dunleavy said.

Moss is confident the sport and safety of shooting is a valuable asset for the community, and is glad to see it grow.

“SCTP is a youth development program that starts off with gun safety and teaches kids sportsmanship, sportsmanship, teamwork, responsibility and self confidence,” Moss said. “Basically, we’re trying to raise — similar to Scouts, 4-H or FFA — the next generation of responsible men and women. The only difference is we use competitive shotgun shooting to do that.”

Contact Tim Rockey at 352-2252 or at tim.rockey@frontiersman.com. Follow @trockeynews on Twitter.