Coached By Parents, Lakeville Trap Shooter Hits 99 Of 100 Targets At State
LAKEVILLE, Minn. (WCCO) -- He is a baseball player with pretty good hand-eye coordination.
That lends itself well to his parents' favorite sport, where they coach him and in some cases, compete with him.
Ben Hines loves baseball. He will play in college next year. It's his passion.
There is another sport he has excelled at: Trap shooting. A little like baseball.
"A little bit of hand-eye but they're both kind of mental games. You can't get down on yourself because if you miss a target, you've got to get back down. Kind of like the next at-bat in baseball I'd say," Hines said. "A lot more mental aspects I'd say, than physical correlation."
On this day, he shoots with his mother and that's not easy competition. She grew up shooting with her father, who ran a trap and skeet club. She excelled and competed in college.
"I was on the All-American team for several years in the 80s and one year I had the highest average of all women in the United States," Virginia Hines said.
That's how Ben learned. In fact, in the State Tournament, he connected on 99 of 100 targets.
"I didn't expect to break 99. I just went in there and broke the first 25. Then it was 50, then 99 out of 100 so it was a great experience," Ben Hines said.
And his coaches on the team, his father and his mother, who sees the growth of an evolving sport.
"We have 100 on the Lakeville South trap team and we have to limit that, so we have about 20 or 30 every year on the waiting list," Virginia said.
This day, it's just about mother and son getting together and shooting some trap, and that's a pretty good day.
"It's kind of just like seeing the target go to smoke I guess. Knowing that you just hit it 100 percent entirely, it just feels good and you want to keep doing it and doing it and doing it," Ben Hines said.
