NCJA Charity Challenge AAR

As you probably know, on Saturday, Nov. 10, 2012, I attended the North Carolina Justice Academy Charity Challenge at the Justice Academy in Salemburg, NC. This was a pistol match with all of the money taken in going to Hope for the Warrior, which is a charity for wounded troops.

We arrived around 7:00am, and it was just above freezing outside, and I quickly learned that I did not wear enough layers. Thankfully it warmed up quickly. We got signed in, and I was surprised to see that we received some great shooters bags with swag from sponsors, and a T-shirt. I wasn’t expecting that!

After sign in, we had a short safety brief, and we were split into squads. We then moved to our first stage with our squad. My squad shot Stage 5 first, and it was a good warm up for us, because it was later removed from the match! We then went on down the line from stage to stage. The stages were fun, and challenging. There were a LOT of steel targets, including a Texas star, among other things. (I had never shot a Texas star before, but cleaned it with 5 shots.)

At the beginning of the stages, we were read a scenario and we were not given a walk through. This made for an interesting time, as the stages were shot somewhat blind. On Stage 2, I neglected to engage two paper targets, which cost me dearly. Otherwise I shot a relatively clean, accurate match.

One thing that I thought was awesome about this match, was that us shooters did not have to help paste targets or re-set steel, or anything. Our job was to shoot, and the Cadets from the Tarheel Challenge Academy re-set the stages between shooters.

Two of the stages were setup as classifier stages, but we were not told which ones. Based on our scores from these stages, we were grouped with other shooters who were similar. I made it into the Master group, albeit dead last in the Master group, but I was there none the less!

Allen from Tarheel Targets was at the match running his “Tarheel Targets Zombie Alley” side match. He had 4 steel plates on posts that needed to be knocked down with a shotgun. You were given 5 rounds, so there was one make-up shot available. What Allen didn’t tell us, was that he trimmed the barrel on the shotgun, and there was no front sight bead. I’m using this as an excuse for my 7+ second times on the side match, but I did hear that Chad Thompson shot it in something like 3.13 seconds, which is lightening fast!

Not only was the match a good time, but as I mentioned, it was for a good cause. Cynthia sent out an email Sunday night with the match scores, and she said that we raised just over $4000 for Hope for the Warriors!

I took something like 400 photos, and I’m looking for a decent place to host them. As soon as I get them uploaded, I’ll link to the album from here. Here’s some highlights:

All in all, it was a great time, and I’ll definitely be back next year! Mark your calendars, and make sure you are ready in November 2013!