The Washington's Birthday Match
The Washington's Birthday Match has been hosted by the Arizona State Rifle and Pistol Association's Highpower Rifle Division every year since 1892. In other words, the match was already twenty years old when Arizona became a state!
On Sunday, 8 February of this year the firing line at the Ben Avery Shooting Facility was filled to capacity by 46 teams totaling 184 shooters from clubs all over the state. For the first time in recent memory, teams from Tucson Rifle Club were there:
TRC M14 - Jim Denovchek, Don Travers, Kim Wood, and Greg Fallon (captain), Beth Fallon (target puller)
TRC BlackMagic - Shawn Hermann, Rick Smart, Bud Geymer, Bob Pirisky (captain), Brett Meyer (target puller)
TRC EnblocHeads - Pete Wolf, Brian Lukow, Ron Mendez, and Maury Krupp (captain), Rick Pirisky (target puller)
For all practical purposes these were pick-up teams. No grand strategy was planned. No real thought was given to who should be on which team. Experience varied from Distinguished Riflemen to new shooters with only a handful of matches under their belt. Most had never shot in any sort of a team match. They had never practiced together and, in some cases, hadn't even met each other until match day. Just a dozen guys out for a fun day at the range.
The course of fire is the 50-shot National Match Course. With four shooters per team the highest possible team score is 2000 points.
All firing was done from 200 yards with reduced size targets to simulate 300 and 600 yards for the last thirty shots. At only 200 yards the wind and other conditions have less impact, but the smaller scoring rings on the reduced targets make the ability to hold critical. For example, a shot that would score a 9 on the normal 200-yard target might only get you a 7 or even a 6 on the 600-yard reduced target.
Considering all of the above, the results are pretty amazing:
In the Club Team category TRC swept two of the top three awards. TRC Black Magic took SECOND in the club category with an 1804-20X. TRC M14 took THIRD with their 1792-30X. TRC M1 (aka Enblocheads) came in 7th (out of 22) with a 1721-15X.
In the individual categories TRC shooters came away with nearly one-third of the total awards:
-Jim Denovchek 1st Place Civilian 478-8X
-Greg Fallon 1st Place Individual 477-12X
-Shawn Hermann 5th Place Civilian 468-7X
-Rick Smart 12th Place Civilian 463-7X
-Pete Wolf 14th Place Civilian 460-5X
In addition two regular TRC highpower shooters, Ike Smith and Dan Rodriguez, shot for the 162nd Fighter Wing (AZ ANG) which took 1st Place in the Service Team category.
All in all, not a bad showing for a bunch of guys just out for fun.
Submitted by Maury Krupp, 2/11/04
