High Woman Trophy

ajj · Post by **ajj** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 11:47 am

Does anyone else feel it's time for these to go from silhouette shooting? It's not a weightlifting contest. If anything, we should give a "High Man" trophy. How many times have we seen the WORLD CHAMPION forced to politely accept a "High Woman" award right before she is presented with the Overall? I figure she, and the rest of us, appreciate the irony but it makes me uncomfortable.

Mary's been in that situation. What say ye, Innocent?
What say ye all?

ppkny · Post by **ppkny** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 1:01 pm

ajj,
I hope you are in a bunker some place. You should take on a easier cause like changing the course of the Mississippi River.
ppkny

GeoNLR · Post by **GeoNLR** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 1:07 pm

ajj wrote:Does anyone else feel it's time for these to go from silhouette shooting? It's not a weightlifting contest. If anything, we should give a "High Man" trophy. How many times have we seen the WORLD CHAMPION forced to politely accept a "High Woman" award right before she is presented with the Overall? I figure she, and the rest of us, appreciate the irony but it makes me uncomfortable.

Mary's been in that situation. What say ye, Innocent?
What say ye all?

I agree 100%

I think we should have a 300 lb + trophy

McLemore thinks we should have a "no practice trophy"

Etc., Etc., Etc.

Seriously, you are on track. I think at one time this may have been used as a tool to promote our sport / reward the achivements of Youth and Women. Plain fact is, they don't need patronization (sp?)!!! They hold their own, not the exception, but the rule. Kolby (13 at the time) won one of the Arkansas state champion titles at the state match. So am I supposed to feel like "what an achivement for a youth"? Heck no, he's a good shooter. He stood up against the competition and won, peroid point blank. A clp weeks back I got in a shoot off with him for match winner for the day (we both had an off day). I won. Was I supposed to go home feeling bad that I beat a kid in a shoot off? Heck no, I beat the Ar state resident CHAMPION in a shoot off.

Just my 2 cent!

Chicken

ajj · Post by **ajj** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 1:34 pm

Theoretically, it makes some sense for "Juniors." By definition, they haven't had as much time to develop their skills. They also tend to appreciate some tangible recognition more than people who've been at it a couple of decades. It also makes sense for "Seniors" as the ravages of old age destroy our.....what were we talking about? Well, I don't know any Seniors who care about a separate trophy. Lones Wigger got the last one I saw awarded. But that's a different issue.

But women? Why should anyone suggest they're at a disadvantage when it isn't true?
If it's giving women the incentive to compete, I'm for it. I just don't believe that's the case. I was wrong once, back in the fifties, I think.

Never far from the bunker...

Innocent · Post by **Innocent** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 2:22 pm

All right guys, I'll respond to this one eventually. Right now after 9.5 hours of working in the sun (clear day here) and getting up at 02:30 this morning to take pink haired boy to the airport for a robotics trip to Vegas I'm ready to go home.... But the group of 7 Irish guys working here for three months have decided today is the evening that I need to show them how to shoot. Off to burn some ammo at 25 yards out of a pistol.

Ciao for now.

Mary

genphideaux · Post by **genphideaux** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 3:25 pm

My .02 cents, keep the junior and drop all the other ones, to include Hi senior, fatherest travel, wierdest hair style, most whining, worst southern accent, dumbest joke etc..........I think this is a hold over from 3 position.

atomicbrh · Post by **atomicbrh** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 6:25 pm

High Senior means more to the Seniors than they want to admit. There are Seniors who were Masters for decades but now cannot shoot an A class score and have to buy ammo like Eley Sport because their retirement income is not enough to buy anything else. There are Seniors who have had serious illness, joint replacement surgery, etc. and who are in pain walking out to reset animals but even refuse to let anyone reset Rams for them at Monthly matchs. I admire and respect these Seniors for what they are going through to shoot this sport that they love. There should also be a Super-Senior Award.

There should always be Junior Awards. My children are past the age of Sub-Junior which is for the 14 year-olds and under but there should be a 12 and Under Class and a 10 and Under Class not just the three Junior Classes we now have in Silhouette. There should be an Air Rifle and Smallbore Rifle Silhouette Nationals for Juniors only. If my home range had a large enough firing line and appropriate support facilities, I would already be petitioning the NRA to hold a Junior Nationals. I believe a annual Junior Nationals in Silhouette where the normal classifications(B,A,AA,AAA, Master)were not used but just age categories with 1st, 2nd , 3rd awarded and also 1st, 2nd and 3rd overall awarded would guarantee the future of our sport. This is the system used in International Standing and three position ISSF shooting and there are thousands of kids participating in these disciplines. They only award 1st, 2nd and 3rd overall at these matchs. I admire the little ones who are getting up early to go to the ranges, putting up with the heat, a rifle that is too big for them and many other adversities but doing their very best and not giving up just because it is "hard" to hit the small targets.

Bobby R. Huddleston

Evelio Mc Donald · Post by **Evelio Mc Donald** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 9:42 pm

When I started shooting silhouette back in 1972, ( MOST OF YOU FOLKS PROBABLY DON"T EVEN KNOW THE SPORT IS THAT OLD ) in the big matches, like the Nationals or the States in the entry form there was a place for Class, and Category, you had a choice to sign for either one, so if you choose to shoot in class, you were not elegible to win the category which for several years the categories were Woman or Junior .
The idea was to stop the same person for winning, for example the junior class, and maybe the AA class,
In my opinion the category should be re-established, and let the competitor decide where he wants to compete.
Myself as a senior, I don't think is fair to myself or the other shooters to win or place in class, and still win the High Senior.
I think that all match sponsors should look at this rule again. Let the good shooter win, and get a price ( ONE ) and give somebody else a chance to win also.
Evelio Mc Donald

coppertop · Post by **coppertop** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 9:48 pm

I think bobby has got his priorities in order, I agree with what he has to say about the youth and the seniors.

lone ringer · Post by **lone ringer** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:00 am

Bobby, unless we prove to the NRA that the program is a success or has the potential of being bigger than anything we already have they will be very hard to convince. One person runs the silhouette Department and he is not looking for more work to do or more places where to go to run National matches. As popular as Cowboy is now it was a struggle for two years to get him to sanction the matches and then we had to wait five more years to have the first Cowboy Nationals.

You do have the right idea but it has to be done at the local level first. Back in the early 1980

Travelor · Post by **Travelor** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 4:39 am

Alston has a very good point.

I have a "dog in this hunt", so to speak, as my wife shoots with us. She recently "won" 2 First Place Lady trophies at a Regional Match. Her coment was that there doesn't need to be a class for women only and the trophy/awards should be done away with.

I think it is time to stop using this class. Remember equal rights and such.....

Thanks for bringing sanity to this sport,

George

propwash · Post by **propwash** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 6:00 am

I'm also with Alston on this. High shooter is high shooter period. Last year my 13 year old won a club shoot with 50% payback and the match director was going to give him a ribbon and send him home. As he was about to hand some guy a wad of cash...I stepped up to the plate and raised a huge BS flag. He payed the same match fee as everyone else and although he is a junior...he deserves the same acknowledgement and reward as the other shooters.......I think of this everytime I see match scores in bulletins and see some ladies pulling higher scores and going home with high woman...simply BS.

Bob259 · Post by **Bob259** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 7:16 am

atomicbrh wrote:High Senior means more to the Seniors than they want to admit.....and have to buy ammo like Eley Sport because their retirement income is not enough to buy anything else. There are Seniors who have had serious illness, joint replacement surgery, etc. and who are in pain walking out to reset animals but even refuse to let anyone reset Rams for them at Monthly matchs.........Bobby R. Huddleston

Not PPKNY... he always has us set up his animals for him

Gator · Post by **Gator** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 7:16 am

Personally, I feel the Category awards have a place. Up until the mid-90

Innocent · Post by **Innocent** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 7:19 am

Lone Ringer and Cubano both bought in some of the history of the High woman category. The NRA in my youth during position shooting had category and class awards, the leagues I shot in allowed the competitors to choose after they shot which group they preferred to be in but you could not win both a class and category trophy. The purpose of this was to spread the awards to as many competitors as possible and it was common to have as many as 100 plus juniors in a competition.
When I started silhouette shooting in 1977 the NRA gave you the choice of shooting either class or category but the decision had to be made prior to the first shot of the match. Again it was common to see at least 75 to 100 shooters in a local match.

Guys, read your posts!!! Almost all of you are looking to see what can be done to promote and increase the number of people in the sport, nearly all of you are concerned about what your wife says about the money/ equipment involved in the sport. At least two or three have expressed the comments that despite wanting their children to come shooting with them, the wife has other plans for the kids. All of us that have dealt with the NRA and Greg Conner are aware that there is a bureaucracy issue with getting anything done from that point of view.

Solutions??? Personally I do not care about the trophies, and winning both a class and high lady trophy in the same match has little meaning to me, and I suspect that you will find that true of most of the long term shooters, we compete because we love the challenge of competition, the comradeship and the smell of gunpowder. Each match director needs to look at what it is going to take to get people out, especially the 'mothers'.
If that means having a category trophy for women, age groups, and any other "Discriminatory" (had to throw that word in for the liberals!) group then do it. While we can run NRA matches according to their rules, there is nothing stopping us as match directors from running concurrently any other kind of "introduction" type match where we bend the rules to fit what is needed to encourage the family backbone to come out and have fun. That might include having larger pistol targets to shoot at, allowing youth to shoot from the bench for the first few matches, breaking category and class trophies up (not allowing one individual to win both), having class of iron sights, etc....
As for High woman, High Senior awards... I think they are needed, just the distribution system for those awards needs to be reconsidered. Most people like to win something, look at why all of us go to Winny, not every area has a match promoter like David and the entire club at Winny but if you look at how that organization works to spread the "loot" around you can realize why that match is so popular.

So go back to what worked before, a person can not win both a category and class award in the same match. One or the other. Yes that usually means that someone who is 'second' ends up winning something that says 'High ....' but it spreads the awards around and everyone enjoys it more.

Thanks for contributing the history on past matches Lone Ringer and Cubano, see you both at Winny I'm sure, I know Cubano is coming to Jax, and BTW I'm only AAA in standard rifle David, never shot a master score in that gun with the same hunter rifle that I've been master in for years. Still can't figure out why. So how many points do you think I should spot you two when I'm shooting a lighter trigger than I'm used to?
Mary