Back in the Saddle Again

[wmiller45]

With a brand new (to me) gun, and two local shoots under my belt, I went to this NE Arizona match yesterday in St. Johns. 6 stages, about 115 rnds. About 97 or 98 shooters, of which only 18 were open class (yea! less competition the better!)

I had one really questionable hostage nick, and a blatant Mike, but other than that I shot better than I thought I would, especially given the length of time I have been away from this stuff. Now we didn't have any GMs there, and only 4 or 5 Ms, but I managed to stay in the top 10 on all of the stages, even when I screwed up.

To my utter surprise, I ended up 4th in open, and first A! (7th overall) However, for the awards, they used overal match placement, and gave me second A. I got pushed down by one of our local (Tucson) limited shooters who is one of the best in our local club. Overall rankings? When did this start?

Anyway, I thought I did really well, especially given that I was only 2.8 match points behind one of our local M shooters who usually wins our matches at home. I shot a 84.5% overall, but I'm not worried about that because when I shoot the Desert Classic later this year there will be plenty of GMs there to dish out the Humble Pie, and keep my arse down in A class where I belong.

I'm really glad that during sign-in I had the lady move me from Unclassified to A. I would have felt really bad for the other legitimate unclassified shooters.

All in all I had a boatload of fun, which is why I went in the first place.

(Edited by wmiller45 at 9:19 pm on Aug. 4, 2002)

[BrianH]

Bill;

Welcome out of retirement!  Stay awhile.  Things have changed a lot since 1990, but it's still a fun game.  Did you lose you're classification too?  (I'm still trying to clear some 45-50% scores that are holding me is "C" class..)

[wmiller45]

Hey Brian,

Thanks, hopefully I stay a while longer this time. I just need to ignore the whiners and wanna-be's... LOL

Yes, I lost my classification. I was told that they didn't start 'archiving' scores until 96 or so to stop some of the more gamey sorts from dropping out for a year or two to loose their classification and start over.

When I quit, I was a high A at 84.8%. Looks like I'm tad slower now as well as older...

[tightloop]

Who isn't older and slower?

[wmiller45]

tightloop-- Yea, but it's a non-linear scale. In your twenties and thirties, a year or two/three/four didn't seem to make that much of a difference. On the downhill slide to the big Five-oh, things change from month-to-month.

Yes, I know we have a bunch of folks here that are older....but I don't wanna hear it! ;)

[tightloop]

All I can hope for is that old age and wisdom will beat youth and enthusiasm, some of the time.