Dead Eye Shooters start year with a bang

When one thinks about sports, the mind may drift to basketball, football or baseball given the attention they're paid and how they are seemingly commonplace in American society. However, there is often one sport that often gets overlooked entirely: shooting.

The local Dead Eye Shooters, which are coached by Nicole and Larry Snyder, prove that shooting is just as valid and important as more commonplace pastimes and also teaches local kids important skill sets that they can use throughout their lives while also teaching kids gun safety, according to Nicole Snyder.

"It's find what kids are successful at and help them be successful. And that's kind of what Larry and I see. These kids may not go on to do something major all of them, but give them some good skills and help them be successful. That's kind of what we feel we want to do and then we think it's important, particularly in rural communities, get some understanding and some training about firearm safety and gun safety. And that's a big part of what we do as well. We know they're handling guns outside of BB guns and guns that are probably a whole lot more dangerous than a single shot BB gun," Snyder said.

The shooters started off this current season January 25 participating in the Panhandle Best BB Gun and Air Rifle competitions throughout the region which lasted through March and were hosted in Rushville Kimball, Chadron, Hyannis, Ogallala, Alliance and Mitchell with over 50 youth, ages 8 to 18, participating in each competition.

"We get them in in January. They have to go through safety training with us before they can handle the BB guns. We get them training right away on the four different positions they shoot, and they're in to competitions by the first part of February. We're normally not quite this quick. Usually it's mid to the end of February before we start them, but the time frame for the state competition this year was moved up a few weeks so that moved everything else up a few weeks," Snyder said.

Though the time frame was moved up this year, the young BB gun shooters started off the year with a bang with Julia Winstrom, 8, taking first place in the BB gun portion of the Rushville competition and Shauntae Daily, 14, taking first place in both the BB gun and Sporter air rifle portion of the competition with Madie Snyder, 16, placing first in her age division.

For Snyder, it's impressive for Winstrom to come out of the gate taking not only first place at Rushville but at the following competition in Kimball as this is her first year with the program.

"She's doing really well for an eight year old. It's a lot of time for them to sit down and concentrate. It takes a lot of focus and concentration and they get 10 minutes a target. So you know, those little eight year olds are spending 40 minutes pretty tuned. That's a pretty significant amount of time for an 8 year old but yes she's been doing well. And she's been waiting, because her older brother has been shooting and she's just been ready to go. So she was excited this year," Snyder said.

Not only did the Dead Eye Shooters open the season well in the Panhandle Best competition, but continued to excel at the 2014 State 4-H BB and Air Rifle Tournament in Beatrice held March 22 and 23 where the shooters took home top honors in several different age divisions.

Chris Foster, 8, took first place in his age division with a grand total score of 426 and also received the top score on a written 50 question, 100 point quiz required for the BB gun portion of the competition.

"Not only do they have to answer questions about their particular BB gun and the rules that their competition but a lot of what they have to answer on is hunter safety and general safety questions," Snyder said.

Daily also took top honors at the state competition with a grand total score of 472, taking first place in the standing and kneeling positions for 13-15 year olds in the competition.

However, the accolades and achievements of the Dead Eye Shooters is not confined simply to the local competitions or regional competitions, but their shooting and commitment has propelled them into exclusive, national competitions.

Madie Snyder, daughter of Larry and Nicole, has competed in several national competitions this past year, even traveling to Fort Benning, Georgia where she participated in the Army National Junior Air Rifle Championship hosted by the U. S. Army Marksmanship Unit and took 15th place overall and 3rd place in the individual category.

"It was a national invitational. She participated in a qualifying shoot in Beatrice in December and she qualified to attend in Georgia, the U.S. Army Junior National. You go down. You shoot for a couple days with kids all over the United States who were invited to participate as well, both teams and individual. They shoot for two days and at the end of those two days they give awards. She was frustrated. Her gun was not cooperating so she ended up placing 15th overall and she was the third place individual that wasn't part of a team. So she did pretty well, I thought, for her gun not functioning well for her," Snyder said.

Madie along with Daily and Wyatt Long also competed in the CMP Regional Championships with Madie competing at Camp Perry in Ohio and Daily and Long competing in Layton, Utah.

"They qualified for that by competing, we had a postal, and what we mean by a postal is that they send us out to targets, the kids shoot them supervised and then we send the targets back in. They then scored those targets and based on the scores, they invited the top kids to participate in the regional competition. Madie wanted to participate in the NRA National, that's why we went to Ohio and the others went to Utah," Snyder said.

Madie finished the competition in 5th place out of 113 competitors in Ohio with a final score of 1,177 and ranked 13th overall of all those who competed at the three locations hosting the competition throughout the country.

"She did really well. That's the second time she's been in a final. She was in, when we went to Daisy National BB Gun and Air Rifle last year, but it wasn't nearly as big a competition. She did really well. She was 6th when she went to finals and she pulled herself up a position. If she wouldn't have shot a 4.2...she shot a 4.2 on one of her shots and I was like, 'Oh, Madie!' She would've medaled. She would have been in the top three if she wouldn't have shot that 4.2 but she did so that moved her into fifth place. So we were really, really tickled for her on that," Snyder said.

Long and Daily did fairly well in the Utah competition. Long placed 74th with a score of 1,096 ranking 212th out of 241 in the precision air rifle division. Daily placed 35 out of 71 in Utah in the sporter division with a score of 1,030 ranking 130 out of 272 competitors in her division overall.

"For Wyatt and Shauntae, this was really their first major competition that they had gone to ever. So we were really tickled with how well they both did. Shauntae shot one of her best scores on the first day of competition and she was doing really well," Snyder said

The competition also helped the shooters get used to shooting at electronic targets.

"They shoot at one single bull and it scores it electronically so they know how they do each shot. They can see it on a screen. It's just kind of a new situation to deal with when you're shooting so the first time kids shoot on that it can be kind of stressful," Snyder said.

Coming down the line, Madie will soon be participating in a very exclusive shoot for the American Legion.

"We just got notification and at some point, we can sit down and discuss that with you too, all the kids shot an American Legion Postal in January. There were over 1,000 kids that shot that postal. The top 40 scores then are asked to shoot a second round, and Madie was in there. She was the 8th," Snyder said. "She shot her second round and she was 7th overall and has now been invited to Colorado Springs to compete in that national competition. There's only 15 kids in the nation that are invited. They do four days of shooting finals and they go to the Olympic training center to do that. We're way excited to do that."

The Dead Eye Shooters and the opportunity to attend local, regional and even national championships is not only a pastime for local kids to enjoy, but it can also lead to opportunities in the future such as college scholarships and a chance to hone their skills to participate in international competition.

"Well, small bore shooting, which is a .22. It's basically like precision but it's with a .22 versus an air rifle is an NCAA sanctioned sport, rifle competition. You have large schools, NCAA schools division one and two that have teams and compete nationally. All of our Olympic competitors come out of those programs. In fact, if you go to the University of Nebraska, we have actually a pretty decent ranked NCAA women's air rifle team. So there's opportunities there, you know, to get scholarships and see the world," Snyder said.

If nothing else, the program gives kids a chance to get familiar with something they can enjoy doing and that can be part of their lives for years to come.

"There were guys like at the NRA competition we went to, there were guys there in their 60s that were still competing that just really liked to shoot. Shooting is a lifetime sport. Shooting is something that you can start kids shooting out in BB gun and they can continue to do some sort of shooting whether recreational or competitive until they're done with this earth," Snyder said.