Apart from the obvious sounds of his shotgun firing and clay pigeons soaring through the air, there was building chatter behind him. Compliments and comments pouring in were to be expected as the 2026 New Ulm High School grad hit target after target.

But as Fruhwirth hit 25, 50 and then 75 straight shots, he knew he had to cancel out that noise with complete concentration.

Fruhwirth ended up hitting 96 shots in a row before missing at the Minnesota Trap Shooting Championship on June 23 in Alexandria. He didn’t have much time to react to his miss, but he did lock back in and hit his final three targets to go 99 for 100.

There was no perfect finish for him, but it was pretty close and it was some of the best shooting ever seen from a member of the New Ulm Eagles clay target team.

Submitted photo Fruhwirth poses for a photo following the Minnesota Trap Shooting Championship on June 23 in Alexandria. There, Fruhwirth hit 25, 50 and 75 straight shots, eventually hitting 96 in a row.

It was an eagle-eyed performance through and through.

In Alexandria, shooters got 50 shots in a row and then had to wait until other participants finished before starting their second 50 shots.

“When you shoot your first 50, you have to try and take everything out of your mind,” Fruhwirth said. “You can’t let your body take over yourself because as soon as your body takes over and you start thinking too much, you’re just going to miss and you’ve just got to try and stay as consistent as possible shooting. So, I cleared everything. You just stay calm, stay consistent and it will come to you.”

After a perfect first round of 50 targets hit, Fruhwirth started hearing compliments come in. While he appreciated them, he tried to not let them get to his head too much.

“When I got to my 75th, I was thinking, ‘OK, I’m doing good. But I have to block out everyone around me,’ because everyone was trying to hype me up,” he said. “And it’s kind of in a good way … but as a shooter, you don’t want everyone giving you these congratulations until after, because that’s the distraction that can get you kind of mind-boggled.”

Fruhwirth uses a Browning 525 for trap shooting. The 12 Gauge Over/Under shotgun has been a favorite of his since buying it from his grandpa, and last week’s showing is a pretty good reason why.

“My grandpa actually had it for a while and then I bought it off of him last year,” Fruhwirth said. “I shot it for like half the season last year and all this season and I just love shooting that gun.”

Like any good trap shooter, Fruhwirth didn’t get the results he saw last week by luck and it wasn’t without a lot of practice. In fact, he remembers starting clay target shooting when he was around 7 years old with less-than-pretty results.

“I think the first time I had ever seen trap was at the Gibbon Sportsmen’s Club,” Fruhwirth said. “My grandpa and my stepdad, they were just shooting out there for fun, and I really liked it. They actually did bring an extra 20 gauge gun and said, ‘Do you want to shoot?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ I think I shot maybe one, two, maybe three out of 25, maybe 50, but I just kind of got hooked on it.”

Despite four other shooters in his class hitting 99 clay birds last week in Alexandria, Fruhwirth finished sixth overall in the Trap High Gun Varsity Male class with a reverse run tiebreaker. His reverse run score was a 3 since he missed the third shot from his last one.

Only one shooter, Northfield’s Ian Sevcik, hit all 100 shots in the Trap High Gun Varsity Male class out of 301 total shooters.

Fruhwirth would have liked to have had a perfect score, but being in that type of elite company was a win in itself.

“You know, everyone’s very bummed that you miss one, but you can’t always be happy, you have to have some room for growth, I say,” Fruhwirth said. “If you shoot your best score now, what’s to come later, your worst score? I’m just trying to think 99 is my personal best.

“It’s kind of amazing, too, so why would I be sad I missed one bird? I should be excited that I only missed the one bird because that means I’m improving or it wasn’t a time when it mattered. There is now a bigger time when it matters more and that’s coming up [at Nationals], so I just keep practicing because now I know I’ve made a mental mistake on and what I can fix.”

Fruhwirth’s next step is the USA High School Clay Target League National Championship, which takes place from July 8-12 in Mason, Michigan.

Fruhwirth also had two 49-of-50 rounds this season before the Minnesota Trap Shooting Championship, so now he’s getting more comfortable just in time for Nationals.

“[Going to Nationals] I would say is not very common,” Fruhwirth said. “I would say me and Tate Isaacson, who shot a 96 that day, too, [in Alexandria], we kind of pushed to have a team go out to Nationals. It was the first-ever New Ulm team to go to Nationals last year. We had a good average of people that wanted to go.

“We pushed each other to go, we pushed each other to practice and get ready for it. We went out there and had a good time. We knew we weren’t going to place first, but we knew if we had fun, we could place higher and that’s what we did. We did a pretty good job.”

Fruhwirth shot a 91 in the team portion of the competition at Nationals last year and turned in a 96 individually.

The National Championship team championship qualifier takes place on July 10, with New Ulm shooting at 11:05 a.m. The individual qualifier takes place July 11, with the team and individual championship rounds scheduled for July 12.