On the first weekend of June, I was a spectator in St. Paul for the Minnesota State High School Track & Field championships.

My son and several of his teamm ates were fort unate enough to qual- ify and thus end their high school athletic careers in memorable fashion. Both before and since those dates, high school athletes in such other sports as baseball, softball, golf,

tennis and lacrosse have

brought their school years - and perhaps their time as

high school athletes - to a close.

If someone had told me that our high school tournaments would include the smell of smokeless powder and the crack of shotguns sending a charge of pellets downrange toward a speeding clay target, I would have accused them of wishful thinking, or perhaps hallucinations.

But that's exactly what happened on the second weekend of June, when eight school teams gathered at the Minneapolis Gun Club's grounds for the firstever State High School Trapshooting Tournament. This tourney included teams from Minnetonka, Hopkins, Wayzata, White Bear Lake, Prior Lake, Robbinsdale Armstrong, Worthington and St. Francis.

If you know anything about Minnesota high school geography, you'll immediately recognize that more than half of these schools are suburban, or core Twin Cities schools. Aren't these the same citified folks who are supposed to disapprove of guns, dislike hunting and want to confiscate our firearms? Apparently not all do, for about 150 shooterathletes were expected to compete.

These schools now recognize competitive trapshooting as a part of their athletic programs and athletes can earn varsity letters just as they can in baseball, golf or tennis. This is a very positive development in the face of recent national and state data showing a static, or declining, interest in hunting and the shooting sports.

Evidently for at least some high schoolers, their commitment to traditional sports, debate, choir, other extracurriculars, textmessaging their friends, or updating their Face Book Internet pages, doesn't rule out their ability to spend time with a firearm in their hands and the goal of breaking clay targets. Not surprisingly, shooting by these teams does not take place on school grounds and firearms are not permitted on school property.

This certainly seems like another angle for boosting interest in the outdoors. We value the Take-a-Kid Fishing programs and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' Youth Waterfowl Hunts, in which adults show kids the ropes in angling or in duck and goose hunting. These are positive programs, but are mostly one-on-one between an adult and a youth.

But there is also a lot to be said for the importance of peer-to-peer influence. We see the effects in clothing, music, video games, choice of extracurricular activities and a lot of other dimensions of teen and young adult life. Young people are interested in what other young people are doing. Imagine the growth potential of having competitive shooting considered a school sport, with recognition like that given to football, baseball and hockey players.

Kudos are due to the Minnesota Trapshooting Association, which dedicated about $10,000 to make the high school state tournament happen. Corporate sponsors of other events, like the state track and field Meet, expect to receive commercial benefits in return for their contributions. A huge bank sponsor, for example, dedicates its dollars in hopes of generating even more dollars from customers.

The MTA, however, is not a commercial organization. Its aim is to strengthen the core of support for the shooting sports in our state and is putting its money where its mouth is. As others get wind of it, this concept could very well spread to more Minnesota high schools. It's happening beyond Minnesota's borders; there's no reason why it can't happen here, too.