Oskaloosa, IA – The Indian Hills Shotgun Sports squad took home a second-place finish in both the Skeet and Sporting Clays disciplines at the 2024 Iowa Community College Athletic Conference (ICCAC) East Division Triangular on Friday. The Warriors finished as runners-up in both shoots behind Hawkeye Community College.

Freshman Johnathon Boender (Oskaloosa, IA/Pella Christian) paved the way for the Warriors in Skeet with a 98 to take top honors. Following three of his four rounds with a perfect 25 targets, Boender finished atop the podium via a shoot-off. Boender was followed by teammate Aidan Eischen (New Sharon, IA/North Mahaska) who tallied a 96 while three individuals - Carson Abrams (Oskaloosa, IA/Pella Christian), Cooper Clark (Story City, IA/Roland Story), and Jason Stursma (Harvey, IA/Pella) al tied with a 94 for the Warriors. As a team, the Warriors tallied 288/300 targets to finish just three birds shy of Hawkeye's 291. Southeastern Community College placed third in the three-team shoot with 245/300 targets.

"It was a great morning to shoot skeet," stated head coach Jake Stalzer. "John (Boender) firing a 98 right off the bat was huge for us. Aidan (Eischen) has really came on strong in skeet and proud of his efforts and leadership keeping his squad positive. Even though we only took our top-three scores, having three 94's for our third scorer is what we need as state will be scored as a five-person team out of 500 instead of three out of 300 for this regular season championship. Fun fact after looking back on last year's competition, we improved our team skeet score by 13 targets. That goes to show the hard work these men and women have put in and improved over the past year and I don't see us slowing down anytime soon."

Abrams powered the Warriors in Sporting Clays with 90 targets to finish as the second-place male for the Warriors. Abrams was joined in the top-three team scoring by fellow sophomores Zane Kirubakaran (Ottumwa, IA/Ottumwa) and Jordan Patterson (Cambridge, IA/Ballard).

"The Mahaska County Ikes really changed up the sporting course for us this year," Stalzer noted. "The backdrop and target presentations differed drastically from the past couple years we have had this shoot there. It was definitely a fun, but spread out course. I felt good going into the afternoon, however, a few of our top sporting guys had a rough couple stations and we came up just short by five targets. Jordan cracking our top-three and finishing the day up with an 87 was great to see. Something clicked for him on Friday and pretty pumped for him.

Big thanks to the Mahaska County Izaak Walton League for hosting us again this year.  Larry Gay, and David and Tammy Vos are the folks on the backside and without them yesterday would not have been possible. It takes a lot of time and effort to put on a shoot of this magnitude and they do a fantastic job."

The Warriors tallied 265/300 targets from its top three guns, narrowly missing out on a first-place finish as Hawkeye produced 270/300 targets. Southeastern placed third overall with 232 targets.

The Warriors return to action October 4 with its lone home shoot of the year, an ICCAC Trap dual against Hawkeye. Action from the Ottumwa Izaak Walton League gets underway at 10:00 AM.

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