2013 Steel Challenge Results

Another year in the books for Steel Challenge, and this one will definitely be remembered by shooters at least as the soggiest Steel Challenge in memory. 105 shooters braved the constant Florida afternoon rains, many of whom were also coming off a similarly rainy ProAm match. This year’s Steel Challenge saw some changes from previous year’s matches – gone are the impact stop plates or flight time calculations; this match was run on straight time. Your last shot fired that strikes the stop plate is your time. This means that all the old world records are out the door, as those were based on impact plates. Before we continue a discussion of the match though, here are the results from every division.

Max Michel 2013 Champion

Steel Master

  1. BJ Norris

Open/Overall

  1. Max Michel
  2. BJ Norris*
  3. KC Eusebio

*BJ actually finished 2nd and 3rd in the overall. His Limited time with his iron sight gun was actually faster than KC’s open time. Additionally, he shot his Limited gun during the Open match due to an equipment failure on his open gun.

Limited/Iron Sight

  1. BJ Norris
  2. Dave Sevigny
  3. Manny Bragg

Production

  1. JJ Racaza
  2. Muneki S.
  3. Frank Garcia

IPSC Production

  1. Frank Garcia
  2. Augusto D
  3. Jason Koon

Revolver

  1. Elliot Aysen
  2. Molly Smith
  3. Annette Aysen

Single Stack

  1. Craig Underdown
  2. Caleb Giddings
  3. John S.

Women’s Division

  1. Jessie Duff
  2. Kaci Cochran
  3. Randi Rogers

Rimfire

  1. Max Michel
  2. BJ Norris
  3. Dave Sevigny

Those are you 2013 Steel Challenge World Championship 1st-3rd winners. This year was an interesting match, because due to a scheduling conflict with the MGM Junior’s Camp, it had to be moved to Wed/Thur/Fri instead of the traditional Thursday-Saturday format. The move to an all weekday format no doubt affected the number of shooters in attendance at the match, as did the dreary Florida weather forecast.

It’s difficult for me to write this, because I feel very strongly about Steel Challenge as a match. Like Bianchi Cup, it’s a historic match in our community. It goes back to the very early days of the practical shooting sports. That’s why it saddens me to see such a low attended match this year; down even from last year. Steel Challenge as a match is now in the same position that the Bianchi Cup was in back in the early 2000s, before NRA brought in Tom Hughes and saved the match. That’s what Steel Challenge needs now – a shot in the arm from a charismatic leader and organizer, someone who will galvanize supporters and sponsors for the match, and breathe some much needed life back into what should be one of the greatest shooting championships in the nation.

3 Comments

  1. 2nd place finish in Single Stack is still impressive, low turn-out or not.

    Nice work.

    1. Thanks! There weren’t a lot of shooters in Single Stack this year, maybe next year they’ll have a few more.

  2. Florida in the middle of July is not on my list of favorite places to be. September, October, November, December, February I think you get a crowd down there to enjoy the warmer than everywhere else weather.

    I am also interested in the idea of moving it to Florida where there is not a large base of SC shooters like they had in Piru. Also moving a national championship to the middle of a week seems like a bad idea.

    If they do the same format where they shoot the ProAm and SC back to back I will go to FL next year but more for the ProAm than SC.

Comments are closed.