The first Pirates of Texas Carbine Championship is history and in spite of the confusion with the other guys' match the previous weekend, Texas Carbine's first big event was still a huge success. By the time shooting started, 92 folks had signed up for the match although one gentleman had to cancel at the last minute due to emergency knee surgery. When it was all said and done, 88 competitors shot the match, 12 of whom did so with two guns which brought the total shooter count to 100.

Unfortunately, we did have a scores issue and today, after spending more than a few hours trying to figure out what went wrong with the scores worksheet, Nightmare finally found the problem but, when corrected, several of the scores had changed because the worksheet error had caused some data to be switched with others. So, rather than take a chance that there were no other errors, he and his lovely wife spent the rest of the day sorting the score sheets in alphabetical order and then double-checking all the scores. Along the way, a few math and entry errors were found which caused the order of finish to be different for some of the classes than we stated after the match.

Due to the corrected order of finish in each Division, some awards were given out to the wrong people and we hope to correct this but to do that, we have to retrieve the original posted scores from the range so we'll do that tomorrow and get the corrected list out as soon as we can. Once we do, we will ensure that the corrected winners receive their trophies.

We sincerely apologize for the long delay due to the scores problem and rest assured, we will be better prepared for this type of problem at future Pirates matches.

The class act award, (if we had one,) would be shared by Chris McGowan and Jerry Miculek. Chris ran afoul of a rule that conflicted with a rule in another shooting sport he participates in and suffered a match DQ on his last stage. Chris stayed at the range and was one of the many who went the extra mile to help tear down the stages and stow the props. And even though Jerry Miculek is a world-famous shooter, at each stage he was always one of the first to grab a string of pasters and jumped in with the rest of us to help tear down and stow the gear. Definitely first-class individuals, our hats are off to both of you.

We experienced another first during this match with the visit from the folks at the American Trigger Sports Network who came down from Houston to spend the day filming and interviewing the staff and a large number of shooters. All five members of the ATSN crew were extremely friendly, gracious, and clearly wanted to promote the broad subject of all the shooting sports. We thoroughly enjoyed talking with them and Nightmare even got a ride in the helicopter! So, if you were one of those who was filmed or interviewed and are wondering when you might get to see yourself on television, you can keep an eye on their website at ATSN.TV and we will also put a post on the Texas Carbine website when they let us know the date of the program. We certainly appreciated their visit and were especially grateful for their help promoting Texas Carbine in particular and the shootings sports in general.

Even though we had a few hiccups during the day, virtually every member of the staff relayed to Nightmare and I that they had all received compliment after compliment from the shooters. So, we must have done a few things right I guess and we are obviously very happy to receive such glowing comments.

Finally, we want to again thank each and every one of our volunteer staff members for the time and hard work they gave to this match and of course, thanks to all those who took a chance on our fledgling club and signed up to shoot the first Pirates of Texas Carbine Championship.

Most sincerely,

Maytag, Nightmare & Spider