2007 Bay Area Rifle Championship Match Directors Report
Geoffrey Linder, USPSA TY11141
On Sunday, April 29th, 2007, 52 of the best rifle shooters in the western region came together at the Richmond Rod & Gun Club to face nine IPSC style rifle stages that were a lot trickier than they looked at first glance. When the dust finally cleared it was Kelly Neal who wound up on top in a hard fought battle against Keith Garcia for the the title in Semi-Auto Tactical. Kelly also went away with the High LEO category honors. |
Kelly Neal - Stage 5
|
Ron Gunar - Stage 9
|
Stage Five (Crowd Scene) was the bane of more than one of of the top dawgs in this hunt. After hearing that Kelly Neal had dropped a whole lot of points on thye hard-cover targets from a small POI shift and was thinking his match was done for, Keith Garcia was courteous enough to experience a long duration malfunction on the same stage that dropped him off the curve just about the same amount. The hunt was suddenly back on!
The rest of the match saw these two cranking on the gas pretty hard to get back on top. My advance estimation of several stages best run times was knocked for a loop by both of them. In the end it was a very close battle with only 3% being the final difference between 1st and 2nd in the ever popular Semi-Auto Tactical division.
|
|
Gary Orr bested the field in Semi-Auto Open to take the prize there against a pretty tough crowd.
Rob Ryan experienced a case head blow-out early in the day on Stage 4 (Hell Prez') and wound up with a full-auto sear that could not be repaired. He played the upper switch-out game for the rest of the match with his buddy Mark Olivas and managed to get back in the hunt well enough to take second in Semi-Auto Open.
|
Butch Massoni - Stage 6
|
 |
Chris Sechiatano absolutely trashed the curve in Semi-Auto Standard and left the rest of the post & peep folk in the dust. Second in this division was Todd Crow at 73%. Now Todd is no slouch with a rifle as his consistent placing at the top of most major multigun events shows. but he still only managed 73% of his buddy Chris with a Limited rifle. Chris even won stage Seven (Barracks Attack) against everyone heads up!
Bradley Oneto drove a bright blue Tubb 2K to top honors in Manual Action Open. His rifle also got more lookie-loo action during the match than anyone else's by far.
|
|
Richard Wilbur Whupped’ up on the rest of the Cowboy Action shooters in Manual Action Standard.
Mark Turrin used his new Steyr Scout Rifle to get the coveted 1st Sporting Rifle plaque by overcoming the temptation and keeping his bipod stowed for the duration of the match.
Mark Olivas was the top active duty military competitor in the overall standings. John Hartsock didn't need any help to take top Super Senior along with 3rd in Semi-Auto Open.
|
Chris Sechiatano - Stage 8
|
Ron Nakabayashi - Stage 6
|
Thurman Mullen qualified for top Senior while also managing to place 4th overall in the hotly contested Semi-Auto Tactical division. No mean feat!.
Ron Nakabayashi not only earned a plaque for pushing a Garand through the match in Semi-Auto Standard, but he got 100% of the available match style points to go along with what ought to qualify as the worlds most bruised shoulder. I watched him shooting the long distance stages prone and it was brutal!
|
|
Anthony Owens found himself "Smack Dab In The Middle" of the combined overall results, so he went home with our new/old/re-introduced "Crease Shooter" award. This award was traditionally handed out to the shooter who was on the crease when the results sheet was folded in half. In the good old days when MSS was used to score and printouts were made on a dot-matrix, this was a pretty good way of getting to the middle of things.
|
Arnold Peterson - Stage 7
|
Mark Turrin - Stage 3
|
Our old friend Mr. Murphy was at the match in full force and and many a competitors mettle was severely strained by various gun/ammo related malfunctions, wandering zeros and all the rest of your favorite match demons.
All paper targets in the match were the IPSC Classic (Turtle) and that made for a lot of head-shaking downrange where many competitors found out about the different shape scoring zones the hard way.
|
|
Thanks again to all the competitors who braved perfect weather to make this years Bay Area Rifle Championship the Biggest Little Rifle Match in the West!
|
Dan Carden - Stage 9
|
|
