On March 29th, the Southern Indiana Rifle and Pistol club hosted an introduction to pistol class intended to welcome new and beginner shooters interested in competing in Bullseye Pistol matches. Twenty students of various beginner skill levels attended the course taught by SIRAPC Pistol Director, Lenny Chopovsky. Lenny’s pistol training goes all the way back to his teens in the days of the USSR where he shot on his school team where he ultimately earned a scholarship to attend university. Lenny took a fifty-year break from his pistol shooting but is now back focusing on competition with the intensity of a person intent on perfecting his sport. He took over the position of Pistol Director from the legendary Coach Dave Richardson and is doing a great job filling those large shoes left in Coach Dave’s absence.
Lenny’s class focused on the critical aspects of pistol marksmanship beginning with reducing a shooter’s minimum arc of movement by focusing on stance, position, grip, and breath control. These concepts were built on with the addition of sight alignment and sight picture ending with the crucial skill of mastering trigger control. These concepts were then applied on the firing line with some live fire training followed by target analysis.
It would have been hard for anyone attending the class not to have picked up at least one new item to practice to improve their pistol marksmanship. Based on the smiles and comments at the end of the course, many left the class eager for the next lesson in the series featuring the topics of sustained fire consisting of both the Timed-Fire and Rapid-Fire stages of the Bullseye match course of fire.
It is the hope of Lenny and the club that these introductory classes will inspire new shooters to come out and try this fun and challenging discipline by removing barriers and the initial intimidation of precision pistol shooting.
If you are interested in shooting bullseye pistol, Southern Indiana Rifle and Pistol begins their outdoor pistol season on April 25th with an outdoor 2700 match at its Borden, Indiana range. If you would like more information about the club, check out the Club’s website at www.sirapc.com to see the club’s match calendar.
Drew Rudd
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