Greetings Indiana shooters!
It’s difficult for me to believe that when you will be reading this in October the busy shooting months are already winding down for most Indiana shooters. I hope everyone had a fun & successful 2015 target year and you are already off to a good start with the 2016 target year!
Speaking of success in 2015, on behalf of the entire trapshooting family in the State of Indiana, I would like to congratulate Mr. Michael Welte, this year’s Grand American Handicap Champion!! This is truly the pinnacle event in our sport and I can think of no one more deserving to win this Championship Ring than Mike!! Way to go!
Evansville Gun Club was a wonderful host for the 2015 ATA Central Zone shoot, one of eight locations within the Central Zone. Several Indiana shooters earned ATA trophies & pins by competing against shooters at all of the locations from around the zone. Central Zone winners from Indiana include Dr. R. Scott Norris, Jason Ivanovic, C.W. Arnett, Debbie Atwood, Ginny Matthews & Tom Matthews. Plus several of our friends from Illinois came to shoot at Evansville and won Central Zone honors as well. A big “Thank You” goes to Evansville Gun Club for hosting this shoot! For me personally it was an absolute pleasure working with Harold Bowers, Dianna Simkins & Jane Norris and I was really impressed with their new 3S computer system and leaderboard display that is now in use at the club.
Browsing through the Grand American trophy reports, it’s great to see so many Indiana shooters listed! Trophy winnner’s at the 2015 Grand include C.W. Arnett, Devon Harris, David Norris, Ron Zimmerman, Stephen Byrns, Mike Williams, Larry Ellis, Elvin Key, Tom Antczak, Tim May, Vern Brown, Dave Winn, Jack Curry, Eric Shroyer, Tank Lunsford, Jerry Brown, Tim Gunter, Michael Ross, Dillen Johnson, Tom Kleyla, and of course as mentioned, Michael Welte. Hope I didn’t miss anyone. Congrats to all of these Indiana shooters!
Looking at the winners list for the Cardinal Classic in Marengo, Ohio, it is safe to say that Indiana was well represented with some great scores there as well! Evidently on Thursday’s handicap events Indiana shooters put on a pretty good show with Ben Morriston taking top honors in Event #7 with the lone 97, and then later that same day in Event #9 William Alderson bested the field with the sole 98! Indiana trophy winners at the Cardinal Classic were Debbie Thompson, Jack Curry, Ben Morriston, Mark Jamison, Daniel Arrington, William Alderson, Tank Lunsford, Gary May, Tom Neal, Carl Hazelwood, Ken Heathcoate, Heather Lunsford and Curt Lunsford.
Congrats go out to Charlie Vise who shot and broke his 100,000th registered Handicap target at Rush County Conservation Club in late August!
Make sure you take full advantage of some nice autumn weather and go shoot some targets and support our local clubs. Check out the www.indianatrap.com website and click on “Calendar of Events” for a list of what clubs are shooting what days this month. The expanding “Big 50” Programs definitely provide some opportunities to pick up targets this time of year which wouldn’t have been possible in the past.
Unfortunately I do have some sad news to report. Longtime Indiana trapshooter George Gresh passed away on August 6th. George was a member of the ATA since 1990 and amassed an impressive 226,600 total registered targets in his career. I know I will miss seeing him around all of the Central Indiana clubs and my thoughts & prayers go out to his family.
Please don’t hesitate to let me know about anything going on at the local Indiana clubs and I’ll be more than happy to include that info here in my “Around the ATA” column.
Jason Barnett
ATA Delegate