On Oct. 8, senior John Peretz went down to Lynn Creek near Lake of the Ozarks for a trapshooting competition, with nothing more than the clothes on his back and his browning citori 725. He came back to St. Louis U. High with a medal in his back pocket.

Peretz has been trapshooting for 5 years, but it was his sophomore year of high school where he started shooting competitively.

“It was new being around all the people with all the same experiences as me. I had gotten used to shooting with my dad and his buddies, but being surrounded with kids my age with my level of experience was a change of pace, but I got used to it,” said Peretz. 

Trapshooting is a sport where the shooters line up and a machine releases clay birds into the air for the shooters to hit.

“So, the way trapshooting works is you get a squad or team that has five guys on a line 16 yards away from the trap house, The machine throws birds 16 yards away at 35 miles an hour, and the competition is just to see who could hit the most, which squad can hit the most of them,” Peretz said.

The whole competition had 196 teams, and out of all of them Peretz’ team placed 2nd, only missing 14 shots out of 500.

“So my squad took second place in the collegiate division. We had a final score of 486 out of 500. And the first place team had 490. So out of five guys we missed 14 birds a piece which is almost 3 a person,” said Peretz. 

For Peretz’s team, this competition is always one of, if not the biggest, of the season, so to place second in it was a big deal for his team.

“This is the last big shoot of our season. And it's always the largest or the second largest one we go to. It just so happens that this was the first one that we took the podium.”

For this event, many experienced shooters travel to the Ozarks for this competition. In addition to the event consisting of many veteran shooters, for many rookie shooters, this is their first exposure to a big tournament. 

“This event is huge because it's part of the Scholastic clay target program. So a lot of it is about getting new shooters into it. And those kids, some of them are 10 years old, some of them are my age just getting into shooting,” said Peretz. “And so to be there and be able to teach and mentor, being able to talk with them about getting into the sport is a lot of fun for me and a lot of fun for the guys on my team who have been doing this for four or five years.”