USA Clay Target League National Championship Returns to Lansing, Michigan

Something special returns to Mason, MI this year. It’s a national sporting event unlike any other, and with it will be as many as 10,000 athletes, coaches, parents, and spectators.

To be sure, the Lansing area is no stranger to hosting sporting events – just this month the area will see tennis, softball, and rugby events – but none of these events will bring representative athletes from 455 high schools across the country.

And certainly, none of them will feature blasting flying ceramic discs out of the sky.

The USA High School Clay Target League’s 2024 National Championship returns to the Lansing area, as it has every year since 2018 (save for 2020). It takes place at the MTA Homegrounds in Mason, which is the fourth largest trapshooting facility in the country. The event features nearly 3,000 of the best high school athletes and teams in the sport of trapshooting. In 2024 that includes over 250 students from nearly 50 Michigan high schools.

Trapshooting is a shotgun shooting discipline that requires the hand and eye coordination to hit targets thrown out at random angles at 42 miles per hour.  

If that sounds daunting to you, then this will amaze you: at last year’s National Championship there were 19 perfect scores of 100/100 in the final event, which triggered an additional high-stakes ‘miss and you lose’ shoot-off competition to determine the very best in the nation.

While only the best can compete at a level that can win a National Championship, clay target shooting sports themselves are highly accessible.  Clay target shooting sports have a long history in America. Actors, musicians, authors, and politicians – including President Obama – have participated.  American athletes have taken home medals in clay target shooting sports in every Olympic Games since 1994.

Unlike traditional high school sports, clay target sports are something in which everyone can and does participate. Male and female, young and old, it doesn’t matter. Can you name another high school sport in which the whole family – from a 12-year-old girl to a 90-year-old man – can participate together?

That accessibility is one of the key reasons why the non-profit USA Clay Target League has grown from just 3 Minnesota high school teams with 30 students in 2008, to over 50,000 athletes on nearly 1,800 high schools across the country. In Michigan over 2,200 student athletes from 117 high school teams participated in the League’s 2024 Spring Season.

The 2024 National Champion could be a girl, it could be a boy. It could be an eighth grader or a senior going to college next fall. It could be anyone.

Yeah, this year’s event is sure to be something special.

Interested in watching the event or learning more about trapshooting? Find more information on the USA Clay Target League website. 

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