Overview:
Sporting Clays Nationals in San Antonio is a wrap! The NSCA, National Sporting Clays Association, held it’s National tournament for 10 days at the end of October. This was my second time to attend and compete in this tournament. This is a HUGE multi-event tournament and this year for the first time, we drove around to see what was happening at other event sites. This tournament has the main-event, which is a 12 gauge 300 target sporting clays event. In addition there was also FITASC, Super Sporting, 5-stand, K-cup, Beretta Challenge, 20 g event, pump action event, 5-stand, women’s open, top-gun shoot off, parties, auctions, vendor row and so much more!
The Nationals Experience:
When you first drive in to the National Shooting Complex in San Antonio you see hundreds of flags, trailers parked everywhere, rvs, carts driving in every direction and the sound of all the shotguns firing is pretty amazing! You know you’re in for a good time with all that activity. We arrived on Thursday, un-trailered the ATV, went by registration, got our swag, purchased ammo and hit vendor row.
My shooting partner, Carleta Watts, and I entered the 20 g event and the Ladies Open this year. We were the only women at all in our whole time rotation for that event and squadded with some very nice gentlemen. We shot this event on Friday morning at 10. There was a rain delay as it poured down early in the morning. The Ladies Open took place on Saturday and our squad rotation was at 10am. We met up with a bunch of lady friends from San Antonio and made up 2 full squads. The entire event was won by a beautiful young girl, Kaitlynn Wientjes, on our squad with a score of 49/50! I know another competitor that entered like 7 events and shot over 1000 rounds during the course of the tournament! Goals!
Every day the tournament provides a free lunch for range owners at the house on the hill which had a commanding view of the entire valley where San Antonio sits. So, we hit the house on the hill all 3 days and had a great hot lunch as well as networking with other range owners and press members.
Spectator events:
Friday night there was a free dinner provided by 3 area restaurants and then we headed to the event stadium to watch all the top names in the sport compete for charity in the Top Gun contest. The shooting took place after dark with super bright stadium lights illuminating the target throwers and flying clays. Lots of things were given away, tossed into the crowd and even a beautiful Krieghoff shotgun was given away. The Top Gun was benefitting protate cancer. It was one of the most fun events we attended at Nationals! They gave an interesting statistic at this event. There were 2561 shooters competing. Only 251 were women! There were other events like the Hall of Fame Banquet that took place before our arrival.
Summary:
No matter you shooting ability, anyone can enter Nationals. The Ladies Open is geared towards beginning shooters with only 50 targets. And, you shoot in your “class” so you only compete with those shooters regardless of who you squad with. I highly recommend this tournament. It’s super fun and I intend to compete at this event for the foreseeable future. And next year, I’m bringing some more women to that tournament to start changing that ratio!