GRAND ISLAND, Neb. – For the second time in four years, Concordia University, Nebraska Shooting Sports has claimed the Hastings Bronco Invitational championship. The Bulldogs won the 2024 Hastings Invite this past weekend (Oct. 5-6) while busting 1,773 targets towards the high overall (HOA) team leaderboard. Individually, Concordia’s Kaylee Hinton and Breyer Meeks claimed HOA championships within their respective gender breakdowns. The invite was held at Heartland Public Shooting Park in Grand Island, Neb.
The team title is the first for the program at an event since the 2021 Hastings Invite. Head Coach Dylan Owens came away especially pleased in light of the team’s best showing of the fall season to date.
“It was a lot of fun,” Owens said. “Heartland is a great facility, but it’s wide open and there’s always a lot of wind. Buck (Tietjen) and Devin (Harris) really did a great job starting us off with 98s in skeet. It was a really good display from our team. In super, we had really good, consistent scores from the team. We were in good position going into day two, which started with trap. It’s probably the hardest event to shoot at Heartland. Our team really fought hard and stayed in it on a tough, windy day. We were the only team in the 400s in sporting, so that really set us up to win HOA.”
The Bulldogs were followed in the HOA team standings by familiar foes in Iowa Western Community College (1,755), Hastings College (1,747), Midland University (1,690) and Fort Hays State University (1,676). In addition to claiming the overall team title, Concordia brought home first place trophies in skeet (483/500) and sporting clays (401/500). In the additional categories, the Bulldogs placed third in super sporting (430/500) and second in trap (459/500). Concordia was just one target behind Iowa Western in trap.
Atop the male HOA leaderboard, Meeks (Filer, Idaho) cracked 364 targets while fending off Hastings’ Tanner Dager (357). On the women’s side, Hinton (Hiawatha, Kan.) busted 334 targets in winning the championship by a margin of 10 targets. In addition, event championships were seized by Hinton in super sporting (81), Katie Welker in trap (97) and Meeks in sporting (85). Meanwhile, Tietjen and Harris placed second and third, respectively, in skeet (98 apiece) and Hinton placed second in trap (94).
In terms of sheer HOA totals, Concordia’s top five shooters at the Hastings Invite were Meeks (364), Tietjen (353), Harris (350), Trevor Burch (336), Hinton (334) and Brennen Stones (334). Of the 19 Bulldogs at the invite, 13 busted at least 300 targets. The top contributors to the team win in skeet were Tietjen (98), Harris (98), Meeks (97), Stones (95) and Cael Washburn (95). The top performers in sporting were Meeks (85), Tietjen (82), Harris (80), Sam Blevins (77) and Burch (77).
Said Owens, “I kept preaching this to the team – every target counts. I don’t like to tell them what the scores are looking like. They just need to go out and break as many targets as possible. Just keep fighting for every single target … We’re going to have a couple weeks of a break, which we really need. We’ve had five straight weekends of competitions. We’re really excited this weekend to work the Kids & Clays Tournament and help out Ronald McDonald House Charities.”
As Owens stated, Concordia will have a break in the action. Next up on the schedule will be the Southeast Community College Bobcat Invitational on Oct. 26-27. That invite will be held at Lincoln Trap & Skeet in Lincoln, Neb. There are two competitions remaining on the fall semester schedule.