South Mississippi Practical Shooting

While the overnight weather certainly didn’t help, it turned out to be pretty much a non-factor. We expected (and got) quite a bit of rain over Saturday night into early Sunday morning, but you couldn’t tell that from the condition of the range. We have shot there in way worse conditions. It was damp-ish, but there was no standing water in the stage areas, and the mud factor was pretty low. I don’t think it affected the movement at all, at least for most people. Anyway, Sunday morning brought a darn nice day for a match. It was sunny all day and close to 70 by the time we left.

While online registration got as high as 59, in the end there were 43 shooters when the hammers dropped. It’s not unusual to lose so many due to the threat of weather, but if you used that as your excuse today, you missed a good one for no reason. As usual, the stages were challenging, with tough shots on partials and middle distance targets everywhere. Several stages offered so many plan options that it was hard to pick one and stick with it. Seeing your fellow shooters walk a completely different plan than yours can be disconcerting, especially if you are up next or on deck. But you just have to stick with YOUR plan at that point. Good stages are always marked by a preponderance of plans where no one way seems the best for everybody. Great job, Roger and Gerwin!

When the scores were finally tallied, it looked pretty much like normal, with maybe a few exceptions. Our overall and Open division winner today was Phillip Sexton, who actually did not win a single stage, but was consistent enough to take the top spot. Close on his heels was John Nguyen. In Limited, it was David Pape, who is on a major hot streak at the local level, for the win. In what may be the biggest surprise of the match, Kevin Leonhardt, who is primarily known as a 3-gun shooter (and a darn good one, at that), took the Carry Optics division win, and was 3rd overall! That’s quite an accomplishment even for our local group. His daughter, Morgan, made it a family two-fer with the win in PCC. A huge congratulations also goes out to Scott Braaten for his win in Production. Scott just recently started shooting USPSA and is already doing it well enough to take the local match division win. Finally, Chris Dimenna took the Single Stack title today.

Thank you to everyone for coming out today. We must be doing something right to earn your support. We also appreciate the help in getting everything taken down and put away.

For the complete match results, click the score computer at the right.