Perham shooters earn top-10 finishes at Minnesota trap championships

Perham shooters came home from Alexandria Shooting Park with multiple top-10 finishes at the 113th Minnesota State Trapshooting Tournament, putting the Otter Tail County program in the middle of a statewide field that drew hundreds of competitors. The results gave Perham a clear benchmark against the best trapshooters in Minnesota.

The six-day tournament ran June 25-30, 2024, in Alexandria, Douglas County, with 1,400 registered targets spread across 20 traps. Tournament materials said out-of-state and novice shooters were welcome, a sign of how broad the event’s field was beyond the usual Minnesota core.

That scale mattered because the state shoot was not a local exhibition. It was the annual championship where shooters were sorted by division and tested against a deep roster of competitors from across the state and beyond. Perham’s top-10 finishes showed the school and community program could stay competitive in that kind of setting, not just on the local circuit.

The Minnesota Trapshooting Association also used its welcome message to salute the previous year’s champions, naming Jack Knaus in doubles, Ben Dietz in singles and Abigail Maclecha in handicap. Those titles set the standard in the three main disciplines, and they framed the level Perham shooters were chasing in Alexandria.

For Perham, the payoff was not just a line in the results. The cluster of top-10 finishes showed that the town’s trapshooting program has enough depth to place shooters near the front in a championship built around 1,400 targets and a large, mixed field. In a sport where every target counts, that kind of statewide showing is the measure that matters.