p35
Member
Daily Zero, as it's fondly called around here, ran a pretty positive story on trap shooters. Reporter seemd to get a little sidetracked by the pretty girl shooter, but who among us hasn't done the same?
LITTLEROCK -- Off the firing line, Katie Johnson-Cothren looked out of place with her mascara, toe rings and pink toenails.
But, weight forward and shotgun to her shoulder, the Chehalis resident seemed right at home, breaking 22 of 25 singles targets on the trapshooting range at the Evergreen Sportsmen's Club on Friday.
Lacey native John Glass and Littlerock's Duane Abdon seem just as comfortable on the firing line.
Roughly half of the 1,500 people camping at the Evergreen Sportsmen's Club this week will break targets in the Grand Pacific Trapshooting Championships. Another 90 South Sound residents were hired as temporary help for the tournament.
The event opened with Monday's preliminary rounds and continues through Sunday.
"It's part-time work, and the majority of them are high school students," interim club manager Willie Painter said. "It's short-term, but when we have to hire all those people, all those people are working."
For the shooters, nothing about the sport is short-term. Abdon, 34, is so at home with trapshooting at the club that he bought a house one-tenth of a mile down the road from the range. This summer, he's starting sons Devin, 9, and Chayne, 12, in juniors trapshooting.
"It's a good sport. It's good for the kids. Keeps them out of trouble. They have a lot of programs for kids out here that I like," Abdon said. "This is the kind of place where you get your awareness of how to handle guns."
In a sport dominated by adult males, the stylish sunglasses holding up Johnson-Cothren's firing-line blinders set her apart, but not as much as the sports bra and bare midriff showing through the mesh of her shooting vest.
More striking still is the old-timer pedaling by with a gun rack on the handlebars of his mountain bike.
"We get all walks of life out here," Glass said. The former manager of the club has been competing in trapshooting for 30 years. Johnson-Cothren has been competing since October.
She broke 91 of the 100 targets crossing the 12-guage barrel only slightly smaller than her narrow wrist.
Her success is fairly common, given the eagerness of seasoned competitors to help a new shooter. Even Kyndra Hogan of the national Olympic trapshooting team took the time to give a quick lesson to a first-time shooter Thursday, the sport's signature move for drawing new devotees.
Olympia's Jerry Bates took that same hook two summers ago. The U.S. Army veteran was an expert marksman with military rifles and found a natural talent for trapshooting as well, scoring 99 of 100 in the first competition he entered.
"It's very hard to stay focused," Bates said. "The person who can stay focused with each setup is the one who wins."
As in most sports, the key to good trapshooting is in good practice. That focus or ability to feel at home in the heat of competition is an area of the sport that suffered for Glass during his six years as the club's manager.
"I still probably feel more comfortable shooting here than I would anywhere else," he said.
LITTLEROCK -- Off the firing line, Katie Johnson-Cothren looked out of place with her mascara, toe rings and pink toenails.
But, weight forward and shotgun to her shoulder, the Chehalis resident seemed right at home, breaking 22 of 25 singles targets on the trapshooting range at the Evergreen Sportsmen's Club on Friday.
Lacey native John Glass and Littlerock's Duane Abdon seem just as comfortable on the firing line.
Roughly half of the 1,500 people camping at the Evergreen Sportsmen's Club this week will break targets in the Grand Pacific Trapshooting Championships. Another 90 South Sound residents were hired as temporary help for the tournament.
The event opened with Monday's preliminary rounds and continues through Sunday.
"It's part-time work, and the majority of them are high school students," interim club manager Willie Painter said. "It's short-term, but when we have to hire all those people, all those people are working."
For the shooters, nothing about the sport is short-term. Abdon, 34, is so at home with trapshooting at the club that he bought a house one-tenth of a mile down the road from the range. This summer, he's starting sons Devin, 9, and Chayne, 12, in juniors trapshooting.
"It's a good sport. It's good for the kids. Keeps them out of trouble. They have a lot of programs for kids out here that I like," Abdon said. "This is the kind of place where you get your awareness of how to handle guns."
In a sport dominated by adult males, the stylish sunglasses holding up Johnson-Cothren's firing-line blinders set her apart, but not as much as the sports bra and bare midriff showing through the mesh of her shooting vest.
More striking still is the old-timer pedaling by with a gun rack on the handlebars of his mountain bike.
"We get all walks of life out here," Glass said. The former manager of the club has been competing in trapshooting for 30 years. Johnson-Cothren has been competing since October.
She broke 91 of the 100 targets crossing the 12-guage barrel only slightly smaller than her narrow wrist.
Her success is fairly common, given the eagerness of seasoned competitors to help a new shooter. Even Kyndra Hogan of the national Olympic trapshooting team took the time to give a quick lesson to a first-time shooter Thursday, the sport's signature move for drawing new devotees.
Olympia's Jerry Bates took that same hook two summers ago. The U.S. Army veteran was an expert marksman with military rifles and found a natural talent for trapshooting as well, scoring 99 of 100 in the first competition he entered.
"It's very hard to stay focused," Bates said. "The person who can stay focused with each setup is the one who wins."
As in most sports, the key to good trapshooting is in good practice. That focus or ability to feel at home in the heat of competition is an area of the sport that suffered for Glass during his six years as the club's manager.
"I still probably feel more comfortable shooting here than I would anywhere else," he said.
