Stoner is PBHS’s first All-American trap shooter

Poplar Bluff High School junior Austin Stoner accomplished something no other trap shooter in the school team’s 14-year history has done. In September, Stoner was named to the Amateur Trapshooting Association’s All-American Team.

The honor comes after racking up wins and points in trap events across nine states over the last year, including singles, doubles and handicaps competition.

“The Poplar Bluff trap team started in 2006, and to date, Austin is the only member who has ever tried for, and made, the ATA All-American Team,” said coach Sandy Pike.

Austin Stoner shows some of the awards he’s won recently while attending trap shooting events across nine states.Photo provided

Stoner’s dedication, Pike said, is unequaled.

“He has always practiced more, attended more clinics and researched this sport to be the best he can be,” Pike said. “He is very competitive and driven, so when he said he was going for All-American, there was no doubt he would give it his all to make it.

“I’m very proud of him and know he will go far in the shooting sports world if he chooses.”

Austin Stoner catches his ejected empty hulls while practicing at the Poplar Bluff Gun Club.DAR/Paul Davis

On top of that, he’s kept his grades up and remains a straight-A student.

“He works all the time. He lives and eats and breathes this,” said his mother, Toni Stoner.

Stoner wasn’t aware of the All-American Team program through ATA, his mother said, until this year.

Poplar Bluff High School junior Austin Stoner is the school’s first All American trap shooter.DAR/Paul Davis

“He went to the first state shoot, and when we pulled his scores up, there was a little flag next to his name. We asked about it, and people told us, and the next thing you know, we were going to every state shoot we could find,” she said.

Stoner even quit the high school football team to focus on making the All-American Team.

To qualify, a shooter must shoot a minimum of 3,000 singles, 2,000 handicaps and 1,000 doubles during the season, and they must have competed and won in championship events at qualifying tournaments in a minimum of three different states.

Points are earned at each event, depending on final placement, and those points are totaled each year at the end of August.

With more than 5,000 shooters in Stoner’s junior division, he ended the year ranked 14th nationwide.

From June through September, Stoner’s mother said, the family “did not spend one weekend at home” as they traveled to different trap shooting events.

“My parents have supported me through it all and have taken me everywhere,” said a thankful Stoner.

Remarkably, Stoner has been shooting competitively for just four years.

“I’ve hunted all my life, but hadn’t shot competitively,” he said.

His place in Poplar Bluff trap shooting history came about by a chance meeting while waiting for a haircut.

“I was at the barber shop, and Sandy Pike was in there with Jon (her son) and said I should come out and start shooting with them a little bit,” Stoner recalled. “Whenever I did, it just felt like family.”

And, the rest is history.

“I just love the sport. Growing up around guns and hunting, I’ve always been shooting. Now that I get to do it competitively, knowing there’s a chance at being able to do it in college … it’s worth it,” Stoner said.

Stoner practices several days per week, in addition to time spent on the school wrestling team and the local archery team.

He shoots between 600 and 1,500 shotgun shells each week, and even more when a competition is scheduled.

“In weeks where I’m shooting (competitively), we have at least 1,000 rounds at each shoot, and that can go up to 2,800 over several days,” Stoner said.

The cost to shoot that much and travel extensively, his mother said, is high, but it’s what her son loves.

“I have my kidney on eBay,” she said jokingly.

Stoner hopes to “get as far with it as I can,” he said of his trap shooting career, and he’s already had five college offers.

“This is a sport you can do all throughout high school and college, and you do not have to put it down. With football, when your senior year is over you may never play again,” he said. “This sport, you can do it all your life.”