The 55th edition of the Western Wildcats 6400 Smallbore Championship is now in the books and I would like to take this opportunity to tell you a little bit about the match and some of the individual performances. Day one was a true test of the riflemans patience as we were beset upon by a vicious fish-tailing wind that persisted all day. Steve Goff, the day one winner put together a 1595, which considering the wind, was a damn good score. Ron Wigger and Eric Uptagrafft were right behind him with a 1594 and 1593 respectively. More than half the High Masters scored below 1590 but Allison Villa, a product of the top notch junior program at the Los Angeles Rifle and Revolver Club, was not to be deterred as she fired an outstanding 1590 to top a talented field of Experts! As it turned out it was nothing but up from there for her.
Day two was the polar opposite wind wise as we saw only the mildest of breeze's throughout the day. This great condition stayed with us for the rest of the Championship as well. Of course with good conditions come great scores and accordingly a number of 1600's were fired. Surprisingly both Goff and Uptagrafft dropped a point but racked up some huge X counts between them; Goff 149 and Uptagrafft 141. Allison rose to the occasion and fired a respectable 1597 but the California kid story on the second day was none other than Matt Liao, another LAR&R junior, as he cranked out a noteworthy 1600-127X score to take the Expert class win.
As I said earlier the tame conditions persisted into day three but there was just enough angle changes to the wind that everyone on the line ended up dropping a point or more. Uptagrafft took the overall day with a 1599-139 and Allison just kept getting better as her 1598 soundly thumped all comers in the Expert class. Matt came in with a solid 1593 but with a 1575 on day one he sure needed something much better to have a chance at the overall class win. Day four was a carbon copy of day two as six 1600's attested and guess what Matt backed up day two with another anysight 1600 to be one of only two 3200's fired in the match! Talk about an "ear to ear grin". Pending the NRA's blessing, Matt's 3200-258X score is a new Sub-Junior National Record. Allison nearly got a 1600 but her 1599 gave her a great 6384-491X, and beat out second Expert and fellow Californian Randy Teissedre by a wide 11 point margin and nearly 60 X's to boot
The Overall winner and our 2013 Western Wildcat Champion was Eric Uptagrafft by seven X's over Steve Goff, both having fire 6391's. Ron Zerr was third with an 6387 creedmooring Ohio's own Kevin Nevius. Full results are posted on Desert Sharpshooters dot com. For a pictorial of the people competing in this years event click HERE
RCurtis
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