Results 2010 NSCA National Sporting Clays Championship

Well another season has come and gone, signaled by the completion of the NSCA National Sporting Clays Championships. The 2010 version of the event saw another huge crowd and the event remains popular as ever. Good news for the sport in this slow recovering economy.

Everyone agrees that generally the event is better in late October than mid September as the Texas heat is beginning to give way at that time of the year. The draw back is that the weather can sometimes be a bit schizophrenic. The biggest problems would be the early morning haze and the winds. Both complaints heard in the years previous but this year the weather seems to have played havoc with the already salty targets.

The Nationals is nearly a full week of shooting with the 300 target Main event taking place over four days and four courses. The event offers a FITASC, a 5-stand and a popular prelim event the Krieghoff Kup. The K-Kup is the most attended 100 target event in the country and this year it was won by Brandon Powell, RU was Pat Lieske and 3rd 2009 National Champ Gebben Miles.

Early in the week Diego Duarte put up a score of 90 in FITASC. We watched the score all weekend as it held up against all the potential chellengers. No one had the stuff and Diego’s awesome shooting got him the win. The most talked about targets on the FITASC were a 60+ yard rabbit and a distant looper that was particularly hard to see in the morning haze. The long rabbit isn’t seen that often by shooters around the country and it caused some difficulty. I’ll just say you don’t want to ride that kind of target. Pick a place to kill it, insert your barrels and stretch the lead out keeping the swing compact as possible.

It was evident from the scores being turned in early on Thursday that the Main was going to be a test. Event champion Brad Kidd Jr. who understands the target setters need to please the pros and recreational shooter alike, felt the targets were a little over the top saying, "They didn’t have to make all four courses as hard as they did." Lady Champion Amy Rule said, "They seemed a bit more challenging, but all fair. In prior years, there always seemed to be an "easier" course, I kept waiting for it this year and never found it!" Kidd also added that he thought the weather conditions affected peoples perception of the difficulty of the targets. Both Kidd and Rule mentioned a station on the Orange course as being particularly tough. It featured a long, fast right to left rabbit and a fast right to left tower target on edge over the trees.

Kidd who grew up in Washington, North Carolina and resides in Louisiana has been shooting sporting clays for about 18 years. He credits 1992 National Sporting Clays Champion Scott Downs for teaching him the basics of sporting clays. Further he credits the likes of Dan Carlisle, Cory Kruse and especially Anthony Matarese Jr as helping him perfect the mechanics of his game. Californian Rule says she has been shooting for five years and has had many coaches but credits Ben Husthwaite for taking her game to the next level.

Interestingly both of the 2010 champions credit Husthwaite for helping them with their routines. Kidd said, "Looking back through this year…at the U.S. Open, at the Gamaliel Cup at maybe five or six major shoots, with three or four stands to go, if I hit what I was supposed to hit I would win the shoot. I would always miss two or three that I should’ve hit and end up third, fourth or fifth at all these major shoots.

Ben would tell me about a routine and what it does for you. So I kind of took an idea that Ben had for a routine that he teaches his students and started working on it from the time I got back from Italy in July all the way through the Nationals. I took the routine he talked about and developed it into my own and what you’re trying to do is make that routine so profound that every shot you take feels the same. The pair at practice feels the same as the pair to win the nationals. It’s a regimen, you do it the same every single time. I load the gun the gun the same way, I close the gun the same way, I run through two or three things in my mind the same way every time and it really just puts you in the moment." (ed. note; you can get help from Ben yourself through this website by Asking Ben!)

Kidd shoots Remington 1 1/8oz. 7.5′s through his 32 inch barreled Zoli Kronos which he says is a finely made gun that points like a Perazzi. He had help with the stock fit from Cory Kruse and another Louisiana local shooter. Rule chooses to shoot Gambore White Gold’s through her custom stocked Beretta 391. Her gun sports an Isis recoil reducer and she said, "It actually does have a lot of modifications, the most important being the pink Beretta logos on the receiver!"

As for next seasons goals Rule said, "To continue improving. There’s so much more to learn…we’ll see where that takes me!" Kidd said he plans to focus more on FITASC and is looking forward to shooting the World English, World FITASC and Nationals. He mentioned he is getting a new Zoli in a few weeks and feels he has a good chance at the Open because he likes Anthony Matarese Jr’s targets.

2010 NSCA Nationals Results

Photos credit: www.GreenGirlPhotos.com