Pistol Prodigies wrap up another great season!
Pistol Prodigies wrap up 11th season. Photo courtesy of Scott and Lisa Poet.
submitted by Scott and Lisa Poet, Head Coaches — Pistol Prodigies Youth Pistol and Rifle Team
For 11 years, the Pistol Prodigies have been competing in the Scholastic Action Shooting Program (SASP). SASP is a great nationwide youth development program that uses the shooting sports to teach life skills. Our new season begins September 1. If you would like to learn more about the team, please join us at the Manchester Community Schools Open Houses at Riverside School and the Jr/Sr High School on August 20. We will also hold two informational meetings at the Manchester Sportsman’s Club (MSC) on Wednesday, August 27, and Tuesday, September 2, both at 7pm. Team members wishing to shoot this season must attend August 27 OR September 2.
This was our team’s first major rebuild. Last season we had three of our seniors graduate. While they left a hole in the heart of our team, we had five new members join the team and made us complete again.
Some of the non-shooting highlights of our year. We love to support our communities. In the fall we participated in the Clinton Fall Festival Parade, Trunk-or-Treat at RRD, and Halloween in Manchester. This summer we worked with the Manchester Men’s Club to help clean up after the annual July 3 fireworks. Hunter earned a spot on the SSSF All-Scholastic Team for his academic accomplishments and his shooting scores. Congratulations, Hunter!
Our Senior Division athletes consisted of: Ashley, Brooke N., Drey, Tori, and Vince. Intermediates athletes: Ava, Brooke P., CJ, Fisher, Hunter, Noah, and Waylon. And our Rookies were: Alex, Bradley, Charlie, Sadie, Violet, and Zaydin. Our youngest athlete was in second grade and our oldest was a high school senior.
SASP holds competitions around the country. The Prodigies normally stick to matches in Michigan and Ohio, with the occasional trip to Wisconsin. This year many of our new families, and a couple of our returning families, wanted to travel. So, for 2025, competitions started in Tennessee in May, home to Michigan, moved to Pennsylvania, off to Ohio, back to Michigan, and wrapped up in Ohio in mid July. It was a busy but rewarding year for us!
The TN State Match was held in Southside, Tenn. There the team earned these squad awards: one 1st place and two 2nd places.
The SASP Great Lakes Regional is held in our backyard of Brooklyn, Mich. You could say that we have a home field advantage as this is one of our regular practice facilities. There we won the following squad awards: three 1st places and five 3rd places. Individual High OverAll (HOA) honors go to Drey with a 1st HOA in Rimfire Pistol and a 3rd HOA for PCC.
Next was Wampum, Penn., for the PA State Match. Our success continued with us winning the following squad awards: one 1st place, four 2nd places, and one 3rd place. Individual HOA honors go to CJ with 2nd place for PCC.
The Cardinal Center in Marengo, Ohio, hosts both the OH State Shoot and the SASP National Championships. Our first stop was for the State Shoot. There we earned the following squad awards: four 1st places and three 2nd places. Individual HOA honors go to Ashley with 2nd place Rimfire Pistol, 2nd place PCC, and 3rd place Rimfire Rifle. CJ earned 2nd place HOA for PCC.
St. Joseph County Conservation and Sportsman Club in Sturgis, Mich., hosted our Michigan State Championships for the 10th time. This was our last competition before Nationals. And it was one of the best for us. We earned the following squad medals: three 1st places, three 2nd places, and one 3rd place. Individual HOAs go to Drey with 3rd place in both Rimfire Pistol and PCC. Ashley also earned a 3rd HOA for Rimfire Pistol. Both Ashley and Drey made the All-State team for PCC and Rimfire Pistol. The All-State teams consist of the four fastest pistol and four fastest rifle shooters. Ashley and Drey comprised four of the eight total spots. This was Drey’s 3rd year in a row making All-State and Ashley has done it three of the past four years. We are super proud of them!
Our 11th season wrapped up with a return trip to the Cardinal Center for the SASP National Championships. We competed with some of the best youth athletes from around the country. Many of these athletes, coaches, parents, and teams have become good friends. And we always enjoy seeing our extended family.
While Nationals is nine days, we competed over three days. Saturday was our first day, and we experienced some crazy weather (a possible tornado) that ended our day early and made our 2nd day longer than normal. But even though the weather screwed up our first day at Nationals, the kids handled it like champs. Our performance at Nationals was great. Over 2,500 entries were shot, and we had the following Top 10 squad finishes: Rookie Optic Rifle 4th, Rookie Iron Rifle 5th, Intermediate Iron Rifle 9th, and Rookie PCC 8th. Top 10 Individual finishes go to: Ashley Varsity PCC 10th, Violet Rookie Iron Rifle 9th, Ava Intermediate Entry 5th Rimfire Pistol, and Intermediate Entry Iron Rifle 4th. AVA also earned two individual HOAs at Nationals! Intermediate Entry 3rd PCC and Intermediate Entry 2nd Optic Rifle. Ava had an amazing finish with four Top 5s at Nationals. Congratulations!
The Pistol Prodigies are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. This allows us to offset competition costs by holding fundraising events. Please be on the lookout for our annual Gun-A-Day Raffle coming up this fall.
Our most important asset is our AMAZING group of team supporters. Some are simply folks in the community who follow our FB page and send us constant encouragement. We also have many personal, small business, and corporate sponsors. The sponsors help us offset our competition costs. Our Platinum sponsors are CMR Mechanical, EoTech, Manchester Masonic Lodge #148, Manchester Men’s Club, MidwayUSA Foundation, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and Worth Repeating. Our Founding Sponsors have been with us since we started in 2014: Ann Arbor Arms, Friends of NRA, L&B Excavating, NRA Foundation, Rare Tool, and Sidearm Defense Training, LLC. Our Gold Sponsors are Greg and Nancy Creque. Silver Sponsors include: Boone & Darr Inc., Industrial Contracting Corp., and Seal Tech Insulating, Inc. Bronze Sponsors include: Arnie and Cheryl Trombley, Buzzsaw’s Stump Grinding, Full House Insulators, Ives Auto Parts, and Manchester Collision and Towing. Rounding out the rest of our awesome sponsors are: Framed by Rachel, and X-treme Clean. THANK YOU VERY MUCH to all of our sponsors and those who have supported every season!!
Thank you, Manchester Mirror, for helping us spread the word about the Pistol Prodigies Youth Pistol & Rifle Team!
For more information on the team, please visit www.pistolprodigies.org, come see us at the MCS open houses, and join us at MSC August 27 or September 2.
Shoot Safe and we’ll see you on the range!
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