The North Ridgeville Shooting Club team takes part in a regional invitational tournament

The Sportsmen’s Gun and Reel Club, 44165 Middle Ridge Road in Elyria Township, is hosting its largest shooting event yet this month, hosted by the North Ridgeville Shooting Sports Team.

The first Lake Erie Youth Invitational tournament will take place on June 29th after 130 shooters from across the region are officially registered.

The Ohio Clay Target League and the USA Clay Target League sponsor the event.

Jason Brooks, coach of the North Ridgeville Shooting Sports Team, worked with several co-organizers to organize the event.

Shooting is the fastest growing sport in the country, Brooks said.

“It started in 2017 and we were one of the original six or seven teams,” he said. “I think there were 27 teams at the state tournament this year.”

“It is currently the fastest growing sport in the country.”

The competition’s popularity has exploded since the beginning of the decade, which Brooks says is largely due to two factors.

The sport includes gun safety education and is perhaps the safest sport in the United States in terms of injuries, he said.

“First of all, it’s the safest sport in the country,” Brooks said. “We have zero injuries … no reported injuries since (the USA Clay Target League) was founded, and I believe the league is in its 15th year.”

In response to the sport’s growing popularity, Brooks and several other local shooting coaches created the Lake Erie Youth Invitational.

Now Northeast Ohio will have its own youth shooting sports tournament for the entire region.

“We’ve played in a few tournaments in Pennsylvania over the last two years,” Brooks said. “We became friends with those teams and decided to host our own tournament.”

“We thought we would get maybe 50 to 75 kids. The event was sold out.”

“And it actually opened up a little bit more.”

Although the team is affiliated with North Ridgeville City Schools, it is not registered with the Ohio High School Athletic Association, Brooks said.

The team’s club status has allowed it to recruit players from other schools to strengthen its squad.

“It actually allows us to take kids from other schools,” Brooks said. “We have kids from 10 different schools on our team … out of the 70, over 50 are from North Ridgeville. We have kids from all over.”

Currently, the North Ridgeville students are state champions in trap shooting and runners-up in skeet shooting, he said.

There are some strong contenders for that title at the Lake Erie Youth Invitation, Brooks noted, and several shooters are expected to achieve near-perfect scores.

“This event will feature these great kids shooting 100 skeet each,” Brooks said. “We have kids from all over Ohio and Pennsylvania coming to this first event of its kind.”

“Not only will this event be the first of its kind in Northeast Ohio, but it will also be the largest event held at the Sportmen’s Gun and Reel (Club).”

Brooks said he is excited about the explosion of the sport across the region and the United States as a whole.

Looking ahead to the tournament on June 29, he expressed his joy at the growing number of children willing to try out shooting sports.

“We have some pretty young kids who are shooting incredibly well,” Brooks said. “These kids are having an incredible amount of fun.”

“And then when the kids start shooting, the parents decide, ‘Oh, I can do that with my kids.’ It really is a sport that you can do for a lifetime.”

For more information about the Lake Erie Youth Invitational shooting tournament, visit www.ohiotrap.com.