Brian Zins Wins 11th NRA National Pistol Championship

Though the NRA’s final relay for the 2012 National Pistol Championship is still on the course, the race between to the top two shooters is complete. Heading into today’s competition … the .45 Caliber Championships … Georgia’s James Henderson stood a single shot ahead of 10-time NRA Pistol Champ Brian Zins. Wait, allow me to modify that statement. For if the scores hold true, then it will now read 11-time NRA Pistol Champ Brian Zins.

The final stage was .45 Rapid Fire. 20 shots at 25 yards. After finishing the final stage, Henderson put away his pistol and said “Well, nothing bad…just nothing good.” Zins, apparently feeling the same malady, walked over to Henderson and asked him, “Why didn’t we shoot in the 90’s today?”

It was as though every shooter was, as competitor Brian Keyser calls it, “Camp Perried”. So how did Zins prepare for the final day?

“I don’t really do anything different,” Zins explained. “I’ve been down a lot worse and ended up on top in the end. I try not to think about it too much, I don’t worry about what everyone else is doing. [I] try to minimize my mistakes, and make my mistakes as small as possible…[that] didn’t work that well today though. My mistakes were big mistakes.

“This was probably one of the best shooting conditions I’ve shot in up here. What I think it was…it’s just that ‘Camp Perry Monkey’ that you can’t see him, you can’t feel him on your back but he’s there. There’s just something so mysterious about this place that good days, the scores aren’t there, and you really can’t explain it.”

Even though the “Camp Perry Monkey” jumped on Zins’ back, the preliminary results suggest that Zins will receive his 11th National Pistol Championship Title tonight. Zins said it would feel, “pretty cool” to win his 11th Championship. Either way, he finds it very satisfied with his results after taking a year off due to an elbow injury. Pretty impressive considering that he only picked up the pistol about six weeks ago.

Preliminary results for the National Pistol Championship are posted below. Please remember these results only include relays 1 and 2. Totals from relay 3 will be in the finals soon.