The Pistol Prodigies, local youth shooting team season 12 wrap up
2026 Pistol Prodigies Nations Team. Photo courtesy of Scott & Lisa Poet.
submitted by Scott & Lisa Poet, head coaches, Pistol Prodigies Youth Pistol and Rifle Team
For 12 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 25. We will also hold two informational meetings at the Manchester Sportsman’s Club (MSC) on Wednesday, August 26, and Thursday, August 27, both at 7pm. Returning team members wishing to shoot this season must attend August 26 OR August 27.
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 River Raisin Distillery, and Halloween in Manchester. This summer we worked with the Manchester Men’s Club to help clean up after the annual July 3 fireworks
Our Senior Division athletes consisted of: CJ, Drey, Noah and Tori, Intermediates athletes: Ava, Brooke, Fisher, Hunter, Marcy and Violet. And our Rookies were: Alex, Bradley, Charlie, Dylan, Sadie, and Zaydin. Our youngest athlete was in third grade and our oldest was a high school junior.
Our Coaching Crew is Bodi, Jeff, Lisa, Mike, Scott, and Drey as our junior coach. Our Adult Volunteers are Gary, Jill, and Steve. Thank you for all of your hard work!
SASP holds competitions around the country. The Prodigies attended matches in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio. It was a busy but rewarding year for us!
The Prodigies started off the season with The Valentine Classic Virtual Match. Our friends from The Leadslingers out of Chelsea shot this match with us at Brooklyn Sportsman’s Club. A virtual match is nationwide match where you compete against teams around the country, shoot the assigned stages and email the scores into National staff. After the scores are tallied, the medals are mailed out to the teams that earned them. The Prodigies received Three 1st place with Rookie Optic Rifle, Rookie Iron Rifle and Rookie PCC, and two 3rd place medals with Open Division Optic Rifle and Open Division Iron Rifle. High Overall awards went to Drey for 3rd place in PCC for male and for female 1st for Ava, 2nd for Sadie and 3rd for Tori. HOA for pistol 1st for Drey in males and 2nd for Ava in females.
The SASP Michigan State Match was held May 16th & 17th 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 place, one 2nd place and five 3rd places.
Next was Wampum, Pennsylvania, for the PA State Match May 23rd and 24th. Our success continued with us winning the following squad awards: one 2nd place, and two 3rd places. Individual HOA honors go to Tori with 3rd place for Rimfire Pistol Female.
The Cardinal Center in Marengo, Ohio, hosts both the OH State Shoot and the SASP National Championships. Our first stop was for the OH State Shoot June 13th and 14th. There we earned the following squad awards: one 1st place, five 2nd places and two 3rd places.
St. Joseph County Conservation and Sportsman Club in Sturgis, Mich., hosted our Great Lakes Regional Match June 27th and 28th. This was our last competition before Nationals. And it was one of the best for us. We earned the following squad medals: five 1st places, three 2nd places, and two 3rd places. Individual HOAs go to CJ with 3rd place PCC.
Our 12th 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. Our performance at Nationals was great. Over 2,800 entries were shot, and we had the following Top 10 squad finishes: Rookie Optic Rifle 6th, Rookie Iron Rifle 5th, Intermediate Optic Rifle 9th, and Rookie PCC 4th. The Rookie Squads were in first and second place until the very last day. Top 10 Individual placings are as followed: Sadie earned 2 Top 10’s for Rookie Division 5th in PCC and 10th in Optic Rifle, Ava earned several Top 10’s Intermediate Advance Division placings 8th for Rimfire Pistol and Optic Rifle, 9th for PCC and 10th for Iron Rifle and Bradley had a 10th place finish in Rookie Optic Rifle. Congratulations!
The Top Gun Award is for athletes that shoot in both SASP and the Scholastic Clay Target Program (SCTP). The award combines scores shot at Nationals from both programs to crown a winner. Drey is our only athlete that shoots both programs. When the smoke cleared, he earned a very respectable 9th place out of 40 of the best all-around athletes in the country.
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 Manchester Masonic Lodge #148, Manchester Men’s Club, MidwayUSA Foundation, UA Local 190 Plumbers and Pipefitters Union, RAB Industrials Inc. and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. 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, Seal Tech Insulation, International Industrial Contracting Corp., Stevenson Enterprises and TLC Credit Union. Silver Sponsors include Boone & Darr Inc., EPM Professional Grounds Services, Full House Insulators, Ives Auto Parts, Integrity Demolition & Construction, Huntley Fabrication, S & B Electrical Contractors LLC, Mason’s 52 Landscape Supplies. Bronze Sponsors include Ben’s Equipment, Buzzsaw’s Stump Grinding, Diuble Equipment, H & H Heating & Cooling, Koch & White Heating-Cooling, Manchester Collision and Towing, McLennan Landscape, R.D. Kleinschmidt, Inc., and Stadium Hardware True Value. Rounding out the rest of our awesome sponsors are: ER Lawn Service. 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! Three Ravens Printing in Tecumseh for doing an AWESOME job on our jerseys.
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 26 or August 27.
Shoot Safe and we’ll see you on the range!
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