Purdue outshoots Indiana
in match
By Paul Trembacki
Sports
Editor
The Purdue Trap and Skeet Team captured the Old
Oaken Bucket with a win over Indiana this weekend.
The five-time defending national champions, Purdue,
came close to losing but prevailed 446-444. Indiana is used to finishing
second to Purdue. At last year's national championships in San Antonio,
Indiana finished one place behind the Boilers.
"We've always had really close matches," said Arch
Alexander, faculty adviser for the Purdue trap and skeet club. "We anticipate
another one at nationals."
The annual National Collegiate Clay Targets Championship
will take place at the end of March in San Antonio.
This year's Old Oaken Bucket match was at the Purdue
shooting range Saturday. The team scores were based on the scores of
each team's top five individuals, all of whom took 50 attempts at trap
shooting and 50 at skeet.
The top individual overall was Indiana's Robb Paul,
who hit 92 out of his 100 attempts.
The top skeet shooter was Purdue's Jordan Myers,
a junior in the School of Agriculture. Myers tied Paul with a score
of 48 in trap, so the two went into a shootout, in which the first person
to miss lost. Paul missed.
Myers was Purdue's top finisher with an overall
score of 90. Purdue had several other solid performances.
In skeet, the event in which shooters aim at targets
traveling away from them, Myers wasn't the only one with a 48. Monica
Robar, a sophomore in the School of Agriculture, also had a 48, while
Todd Coble, a sophomore in the School of Science, had a 47.
In trap, the event in which targets fly from left
to right and right to left approximately 50 feet away from the shooter,
Eric Weikum, a junior in the School of Technology, and John Weida, a
sophomore in the School of Management, had Purdue's best scores with
44 each.
However, IU's Brandie Neal won the trap event with
a 46.
Each year Purdue and Indiana's trap and skeet teams
compete on the morning of the IU-Purdue football game for a plaque the
teams call the Old Oaken Bucket, which has been around for approximately
15 years. This year the competition was delayed until this weekend.
"It was a hell of a lot colder and windier this
time of year," Alexander said.
Although the traveling trophy is a plaque and not
an actual bucket, the teams still mimic the football teams' tradition
of marking each victory on the trophy. Instead of adding a "P" or an
"I" to the trophy, the teams engrave "Purdue" or "Indiana" on the plaque.
In football, Purdue's mark is on the Old Oaken
Bucket more than Indiana's. The same goes for the trap and skeet plaque.
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