JACKSONVILLE — Jonesboro Westside Red was looking up at four of its neighboring rivals at the Youth Shooting Sports’ Senior East Regional earlier in May, but Westside’s five shooters all peaked at the right moment on Saturday, June 1, to bring home a Senior Division State Championship for a second time.
Both the junior event, held Friday, May 31, and won for the second-straight year by Corning, and the senior division tourney finals were staged at the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation Shooting Sports Complex here and sponsored by Fiocchi. YSS is a program within the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s Recreational Shooting Division.
Westside Red defeated Cabot Red 121-118, with Jackson Parks and Hayden James both hitting all 25 of their shots and no one on Westside missing more than two clays. Cabot, which finished in a three-way tie at the top for East Region but lost out on the regional championship by a card-off among the teams’ top shooters to Corning, and Westside had won five matches Saturday in head-to-head bracket competition to reach the final. The YSS title match is conducted differently from the rest of the 64-team state tournament, with the final two teams shooting on the same field, one squad followed by the other, but with the same 125 shots per squad. Westside won a coin flip and chose to shoot first, and after three misses in its first 50 shots, was nearly perfect in finishing its hot round. Meanwhile, Cabot duplicated its score from the semifinals, when it edged Shiloh Christian by one hit target to move on.
“After the first round, we got to shooting like we’re capable of,” first-year coach Danny Price said of Westside Red. “The first round was bad, but we got the nerves out of our system and shot the way we normally do.” Westside reached 121 twice in six matches, and all five shooters — Parks, James, Cole Cureton, James Smith and Sam Sloan — produced clean cards throughout the day. Cureton had a stretch of 99 straight hits, Parks said, and Cureton and Parks later competed in the Champion of Champions shootoff, having recorded 50 out of 50 targets during regional action.
Westside is a consolidated school district with students from Bono, Cash and Egypt, three towns outside of Jonesboro. The team has two trap fields near the school where it practices twice a week, Price said, and the squad sees Corning, Harrisburg, Jonesboro and other top teams regularly in scheduled trap shoots during the spring.
Parks and Cureton also went deep in a long Champion of Champions shoot-off in which it seemed for a while that no one among 10 shooters would give in. Eventually, though, Jordan Miller from Harrisburg was the last shooter standing. He and Parks reached the last shooting spot on the trap field, from 27 yards — and the many spectators watching wondered where the pair would shoot from next. Miller hit his 12th straight target, and Parks came next. Suddenly, it was over.
“I was kind of, like, shocked,” Miller said of his win. “(Parks) had been crushing targets the whole time and I was expecting him to crush that one. I think he shot just over it and all I felt was shock. Then it was overwhelming happiness.”
The Champion of Champions winner receives a $2,500 scholarship from the Doyne and Nancy Williams Endowment with the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation.
“I’m going to heat and air (conditioning) school this fall at Arkansas State University-Newport and Marked Tree, and this will help pay for it,” Miller said.