Tennessee Shooter Bill McGuire is 2011 National Sporting Clays Champion
OutdoorHub 11.08.11
After a record number of participants shot more than a million targets, Bill McGuire has won the 2011 National Sporting Clays Championship. The five-day event, hosted by the National Sporting Clays Association (NSCA), concluded last Sunday at the National Shooting Complex in San Antonio.
McGuire, a crowd favorite from Charleston, Tennessee, won his first National Championship by finishing three targets ahead of runner-up Zachary Kienbaum. Finishing third was 2008 champion Anthony Matarese. This was McGuire’s 13th Nationals and 9th consecutive one. He has been an NSCA member since 1996, and coming into Nationals, he had registered 78,625 targets.
Lady Champion was Ashleigh Hafley of Kokomo, Indiana, taking her third national lady’s title. This was the second time Ashleigh has won the Lady Championship for Nationals, the US Open, and World English Sporting Clays shoot in the same year, having also accomplished the feat in 2009. Prior to Nationals, she had 54,400 lifetime targets. She is a member of the shooting team at Bethel University. Lady runner-up for 2011 was Katie Fox, and Diane Sorantino finished third.
The National Championship attracted a record 1626 shooters from 48 states and six foreign countries, with 1437 shooting the main event. According to NSCA Director, Robert Crow, several changes in the event format and opening new areas of the National Shooting Complex for shooting resulted in shooters participating in more events and shooting more targets.
Other major event winners include:
- FITASC – Gebben Miles
- Krieghoff Kup – Mark Hall
- 5-Stand (Classes M-AA) – Travis Mears
- 5-Stand (Classes A-E) – Annabelle Ayres
- 20 Gauge – Jim C. Thomas
- 28 Gauge – Gene A. Sherrod
- .410 Bore – Jon Kruger
- Side-by-Side – Don Currie
- Pump Gun – Scott Robertson
- Super Sporting – Matt Fisher
- All-Around (Main, FITASC, K-Kup, 5-Stand) – Gebben Miles
- Small Bore Overall – Jon Kruger
Complete scores for every event at the National Championship can be found on Winscoreonline.com. Hundreds of photos are posted on NSCA’s Facebook page, Facebook.com/MyNSCA.
“I’d like to congratulate Bill McGuire and all the concurrent and class winners at the National Championship, as well as the event winners,” said Crow. “We’d also like to thank all of our sponsors and shooters whose support made this record-setting National Championship possible.”
National Sporting Clays Association is the official governing and sanctioning body for Sporting Clays. Headquartered at the National Shooting Complex in San Antonio, Texas, the NSCA is the world’s largest Sporting Clays organization, with members in all 50 states and 10 foreign countries. For more information, visit our website at www.NSSA-NSCA.org.
