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Smith: College signing day includes pair of local trapshooters
Posted by Junior Shooters
Jordan Hintz, (center) coach of the shooting sports team at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, is flanked by Jessie Strasser of Waterford and William Stuart of Germantown. Strasser and Stuart are stand-out high school trapshooters who recently accepted scholarships to participate on the Hillsdale team in college. (Photo: Paul A. Smith)
In the modern world of high school athletics, a few points on the calendar known as college signing days are especially notable for young men and women who plan to continue their pursuits after graduation.
This year one of those dates was Feb. 5, when many football players committed to collegiate programs.
But two top-performers on a different field also signed their letters of intent this month.
They were trapshooting standouts Jessica Strasser of Waterford and William Stuart of Germantown, both of whom accepted shooting sports scholarships to Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan.
Strasser is a student at Waterford High School and a member of the Waterford Wolverines Shooting Team. Stuart attends Marquette University High School and is on the Marquette Hilltoppers Trap Team.
Jordan Hintz, a native of Burlington and now head coach at Hillsdale, joined Strasser and Stuart at their signings.
The events were over in less time than it takes to shoot a round of trap. But it was the culmination of thousands of hours spent by Strasser and Stuart improving their skills and honing their competitive poise.
And it represented years of scouting and relationship-building by the college program.
“The families, the students and the school all want to make sure they are making a good decision,” said Hintz, 25. “I’m extremely pleased to have them signed to come to our program this fall.”
The signings highlighted two points: college scholarships are a realistic goal for participants in the Scholastic Clay Target Program and similar programs; and southeastern Wisconsin is and will likely continue to be a hotbed for college recruiters.
Formed in 2001 by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the SCTP provides students from elementary grades through high school and college with the opportunity to participate in trap, skeet and sporting clays, as well as bunker trap, trap doubles, international skeet and skeet doubles.
Most of the teams are associated with schools, but some are organized by conservation and other clubs in communities.
Over the last 19 years it has spread to 48 states and has 20,000 participants, including 3,800 in Wisconsin, said Tom Wondrash, SCTP national director.
Strasser and Stuart both started in SCTP when they were in 7th grade.
Over the last five years both have racked up impressive credentials on the trap field and in the classroom.
Strasser, competing for the Waterford Wolverines, began attracting college recruiters as a 9th-grader when she broke 100 straight on the way to winning the SCTP national championship in intermediate advanced girls trapshooting.
Her overall score of 198 out of 200 was the highest of any female shooter at the event, which included high school and college-aged participants.
Last year as a junior she was the 2019 Wisconsin SCTP ladies senior varsity champion in skeet (93 out of 100), third in the state in sporting clays (76) and fifth in trap (96).
Last semester, taking AP classes, Strasser had a 4.089 grade point average at Waterford.
Although she had been recruited by several schools, Hillsdale was her top choice.
“I’ve felt for a couple years that Hillsdale was the best fit for me,” Strasser said. “I’m super happy about it.”
Stuart started as a complete beginner five years ago, but has improved incrementally each year.
In his junior year, he shot 98 out of 100 in trap at both his conference tournament last May and the state SCTP championship last June. His 98 at the state meet was good for 11th.
He was the top Marquette trapshooter at the 2019 SCTP nationals with a score of 193/200.
Stuart, who has a cumulative GPA of 3.8, was offered academic scholarships at other schools, but Hillsdale was the only one to offer him a scholarships for both trapshooting and academics.
“After I visited (Hillsdale) a couple times and got to know Jordan, I decided to go for it,” Stuart said.
Hillsdale is a liberal arts college with an enrollment of about 1,450 students. It’s in south-central Michigan, about a 3.5 hour drive from southeastern Wisconsin.
It is distinguishing itself as a hub of shooting sports in recent years, not just because of its shotgunning program, which is fully-supported by the school and treated like other varsity activities, but because of the John A. Halter Shooting Sports Center in Hillsdale.
Last fall the college and USA Shooting signed an agreement to certify the Halter center as a regional training and competition site for the national shooting team and sanctioned shooting sports development programs.
The center already is home to the only international trap field in Michigan. It will be adding five more international or “bunker” fields, the type of trap shot in the Olympics, on the 113-acre facility 5 miles from campus.
Hintz, who was a top trapshooter for the Burlington Demons team and later an All-American at Hillsdale, was hired last year as the college’s head coach.
It should come as no surprise that he would include trapshooters from his old stomping grounds in his first recruiting class.
“The quality of the programs in southeastern Wisconsin is very, very high and the competition is so intense that it helps make the best shooters better,” Hintz said. “And the distance to Hillsdale is in a good zone, I think.”
Programs in southeastern Wisconsin have produced multiple SCTP team and individual national championships over the last 15 years and routinely fill the top ranks each year.
In 2019, for example, when 68 teams competed in the SCTP national senior division trap team competition, eight of the top 20 were from southeastern Wisconsin.
Now, as exemplified by Strasser and Stuart earning college scholarships, youth trapshooters may set their sights on more than high scores.
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