Four local young trap shooters recently returned from the National Junior Olympics in Colorado Springs, Colo., where they competed against the country’s best young shooters. The boys are members of The Grateful Lead whose home club, Fairfield County Fish & Game, is located in Newtown. It is the team’s second year qualifying for invitations to the prestigious tournament.

The team’s high shooter is a 16-year-old Michael Terry, a junior from Weston. Nicholas Fatse, 13, is a Newtown Middle School eighth grader who lives in Sandy Hook. Stephen Michael Apgar, also 13, resides in Middlebury, and is starting his freshman year at Pomperaug High School. C. J. Ehrentraut, one of the youngest shooters in the field, is a 12-year-old eighth-grader from Beacon Falls.

During the past year the team members have worked hard and significantly improved scores in this challenging Olympic version of trap shooting. Team Grateful Lead came away from last month’s Junior Olympics as four of the top six guns. Fatse and Ehrentraut were within four targets of earning bronze medals in their class.

For three years, the boys have been active in the Scholastic Clay Target Program, sponsored by the Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation. This organization has more than 8,300 elementary and high school students across the country who compete on local, regional, and national levels in the disciplines of trap, Skeet and sporting clay target shooting.

The Junior Olympics are held under the auspices of USA Shooting — the governing body of shooting sports for the United States Olympic Committee. The winner at the Colorado Springs event wins a slot on the National Development Team, the stepping stone to the United States Olympic team.