Well – here we are, at the very end of the 2009 competition season. 2010 will start in exactly 2 days (on Tuesday, September 1st).

We had a wonderful time in Marengo, OH. The weather was kind of cooperating and I was lucky enough to finish one of the days just 2 minutes before a pouring rain with great lightning came over.

Besides weather – everything else was wonderful: we met a few friends from last year that we had missed during the Pennsylvania state shoot, we had lots of fun competing, and we had a great time using the bunker traps. Unfortunately, it took me until the very last day to get back into International form, but I was really happy I remembered everything coach taught me last year (yes, it has been that long since I shot bunker). You know how it is – now I only have to practice some more

The actual competition – Cardinal Classic – was absolutely great: excellent organization, nice people, good scorers, and trap helpers, and amazing attendance. The shoot was up 23% from last year and gained 6 point recognition in just 4 years. That is in itself a great accomplishment and both Mr. Fishburn and Ohio Trap Association should be congratulated.

And what did the LTS teams and students do? What they have learned from the coach: they had fun, they enjoyed their targets and they had better scores than before. It is something that only after you attend such a big competition you can fully understand: good competition makes better athletes. The better your ‘opponents’, the better you’ll become.

And that’s how I believe everyone shot their best to-date score, that’s how my competition average was the highest for this year, and that’s (just one of the reasons) why we’ll come back given a chance. I, for one, had lots of fun – I managed above-average scores in all 3 specialties, I actually managed some good results in handicap – and I now feel confident that I am on the right track with my handicap (my biggest struggle for the year). I finally understood (as you all know from my Provincials’ blog) what I was doing wrong and – what else is new? – all I need to do is remember before each event that I need to be patient. Yeah, patience is the name of my Nemesis.

I was fortunate enough to be in the same squad with very nice people I shot before – and in one of the events, it helped a lot. The Ball cousins are a pleasure to shoot with – they bring such happiness to the range.

And that’s my lesson for the competition: be happy. If not for you, then for the others around you. Happiness and joy are contagious. Unfortunately so is grumpiness – and the only way to counter-act is with lots of laughter and joy.

All in all – we had fun. We had to manage the Buckeye’s Olympic bunker in the morning and evening, and we had the traps for ourselves 2 full days before and after the competition. We met even more people that way and we shot with some of the juniors from the National team. We made new friends and we had the pleasure of spending time with lots and lots of people. And that’s the beauty of this sport: the community. The larger the community, the better will be for the sport’s associations and for the athletes themselves.

I am so happy to see the many young people competing down there and I have high hopes for the number of young people that will compete up here as well.

Thank you to all our sponsors and supporters – we made it such a successful year with your help and encouragement!!

Thank you to all our athletes – your dedication was amazing and your hard work was humbling!

Thank you to all the parents – through your efforts we have a huge number of young trap-shooters eager to go out and compete.

And not last – thank you to our Head Coach, Florin. His efforts and dedication brought many sleepless nights, but nothing can make him happier than seeing his athletes performing so wonderful (competition or not). And, to crown it all – he received a wonderful recognition from our governing body, ATA: he is the recipient of the 2009 ATA Shooting Coach of the Year.

Congratulations to each and every single person that made this year such a success! Thank you all!

After our amazing start of the season in May, we have a long time ago decided we will finish the season on the same happy note: with the LTS Games. After long and numerous conversations we decided to have it open for everyone and with the summer being as non-summery as possible we pushed the whole event right where it should have been: the very last weekend of August.

We prayed hard for nice weather (I suspect we had one nice weekend over the summer: the Provincials’ one) and we started to get ready about a month in advance. Posters went up, word of mouth was spread, lists were made, more lists were made, friends asked how they can contribute, more lists were made and finally the eve of the Games downed upon us.

With the weather forecast getting a bit better (from 100% rain to 80% down to 60% the night before), Dan and Florin proceeded on a bitterly cold and cloudy afternoon to the club, to at least get some tents up, tarp & all… just in case the sunshine boy (aka as Matthew) couldn’t save the day.

Luckily enough (strange way to define your luck!) it poured Friday night – and you won’t believe it: the moment Florin entered the house the sky opened. Of course, we kept praying through the night… and after a mere 3-4 hours of sleep the morning came and I have to be honest: I was completely afraid to open my eyes and check the light… sure enough, when I summoned enough courage I was greeted by gray clouds. My only hope was the temperature – which was decently above 17 and gave me hope for the rest of the day.

Having just a few hours of sleep meant I had trouble getting everyone ready in time, so we pulled into the west side later than we wanted… and what a sight! All our covered area was flooded! We will not be soaked from above; we would be soaked from the ground… Trapshooters being outdoor people when someone wished we had a shovel ideas started to flow and in moments we had a team literarily digging a trench, a team pushing water with all our means, while Perry smartly went on the other side and returned with all the shovels he could gather. In about half an hour, someone else smartly mentioned we could have moved the white tent… yes, it would have been easier if we would have had enough people in the beginning… now, the area where the tent could have been moved was half-flooded as well so we kept brushing the water down the nice trench. Plus – the kids were so happy to help with building the dam, and splashing in their own ‘Lake Ontario’… Taking pity on us, dear Ken came with the tractor from the other side and dumped 3 loads of gravel – saved by Ken! We now had clean and nice grounds and when people start trickling in were all exclaiming ‘What wonderful luck to have no rain’… yeah… lucky…

But, hey, that’s how teams are built, isn’t it? Not that our team needed more building, we were doing great before 🙂

Anyhow, that’s how we’ll probably remember our first Summer Games: as the Flooded Games!

And what do you know? By the time everyone pulled in and our grounds were ‘steppable’ again even the sun started to shine above us! Saved again by Matthew!

With all the excitement we couldn’t really start when we had planned but nobody was in a real rush, so we proceeded nicely to shoot the first event – 50 singles. We had 4 full squads, 3 of the LTS athletes, and 1 of our supporters, friends, or parents. The forecast kept most the non-LTS trapshooters away from the range, and it wasn’t much we could do about that. The second event went by as smoothly as the first one – with the non-LTS athletes having probably their most fun, as almost none of them ever shot handicap!

And now, with the competition well behind us, we could continue the fun. And so we did: first, we had our hat ceremony for all the first 25 and first 50, followed by the trophies and awards ceremony. We cut the cake for our coach (no, I did not take pictures of the cake when I made it so I cannot show you the beauty!), we presented the 8 trophies and the 2 special awards. I can tell you none of the winners expected to win (maybe Phil had a slight idea) and you could see the surprise on their faces.

Ok, Ok, no more suspense, here is the list:

• Open Champion: Dwight Cowan
• Open R/U – Matt Ciufo
• Open 3rd – Dorin Stanciu (with his personal best in singles, shot with his duck shotgun!)
• LTS Champion: Phil MacDonald
• LTS R/U: Alireza Aliabadi
• LTS Junior: Chloe MacDonald
• LTS New Shooter: Alex Lazich
• LTS Lady: Sacha Kucey
• ‘Dwight Cowan’ Trapshooting Excellence award: Matthew VanHaaren (for dedication and commitment) & Alex Lazich (for the most improved new shooter)

Congratulations to all winners!

And congratulations to everyone – as I was saying in a previous entry, we are grateful for all your support!

The day was not done and almost nobody wanted to leave – and for good reasons, we still had to play the games. We proceeded to a Buddy shoot with our own rules (after 10 shots at 16 yards we moved everyone to 20 yards, the teams were most of them still equal). After all that fun, everyone was still ready for more target smoking, so we had a shoot-out at 27 yards. Now imagine all our 19-20 yarders focusing hard at 27 yards! And imagine a few of them going on for 5 targets! Next year we’ll have to have trophies for the games as well 🙂

I believe everyone had lots of fun and we had a successful end of the season get-together.

In a few days the 2010 target year starts – and with it new hopes, new goals, new wishes. Remember to set your goals appropriately – it is all well to aim for the moon if you understand that just landing among the stars is as good. If you need to reach your goal to be happy, make sure your goal is reachable. And make sure your goal is performance-related, not results-related. Your results will go up and down (there is only one Dave Shaeffer), but your performance should be (like Dan figured it out) a steady slow climb. It’s performance you want to improve – and the results will improve automatically. Always remember: it’s better to have 23 smokes than 25 chips… always!

And how do we get the smokes? Oh, com’on, you should know by now: SEE, SMOOTH, SMOKE… ONE!

As you journey through your trapshooting adventures you’ll meet lots of people. From my personal point of view, this is the best part of trapshooting: the community and the tons of friends you end up with.

Most of the people you’ll meet are amazing ones. You’ll find the odd one from time to time, you’ll most likely find some of the grumpy ones (note: the better you shoot the grumpier some become); but I believe on average the trap shooters are extremely nice people. And I mean EXTREMELY!

As you meet people, make sure you are not prejudiced. It is probably the easiest attitude: to fit someone in a category, to stamp them with a label, based on a lot of circumstances that might or might not reflect reality. So try hard to keep your mind open.

The main observation I made over time is that shy people pass as arrogant people. And I understand very well (because I am shy, believe it or not) how that might happen: they don’t know how to approach strangers, so they keep to themselves… and suddenly people think they don’t want to talk to them. And what’s the easiest reason to put behind? Of course, they don’t want to talk to you because they feel superior. Well… that says a lot about how you feel (remember Eleanor Roosevelt’s “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent”…). But nonetheless, here you are, labeling someone as arrogant just because it didn’t return your ‘hello’.

It is hard not to take everything personally, another feeling/attitude I understand very well. But if XYZ didn’t smile back to you when you met on the range in the morning it’s most likely because he/she was

• preoccupied with the next event
• preoccupied with some personal problems
• preoccupied with some business problems
• worried about the weather

… so just relax… don’t judge a person by the first meeting… or the second meeting… or… even better: don’t judge it at all!

Over these past few years, I have been pleasantly surprised by some people and I have been less than pleasantly surprised by others. In the first case – I judged people and thought they were grumpy or too competitive or too arrogant to talk to a newcomer as I was. In most of the cases, I found out they were simply preoccupied or, in some cases, they were simply waiting to see if I am serious about the sport or not. In the second case – we all have our own negative experiences and we all must deal with them. Enough to say that I believe the positive experiences are exceeding the number of the negative ones. The balance is always tipped in favor of positive. At least for me.

Another personal observation: The main reason some people are grumpy is a (mistaken if you ask me) perception that getting friendly with your competitors will take the edge of your excellence. I am not arguing the idea; I just feel that life is hard enough and short enough to fill it with unknown enemies when you can fill it just the same with as many friendly faces. And, besides, being the energy ‘magnet’ I am I would rather surround myself with positive emotions – starting with my own.

And that’s why I keep the memories of each shoot as a combination of performance, results, and emotions, in more or less the same parts. I believe that emotions impact performance which, in turn, impacts results. It’s kind of a golden triangle and getting on the negative side of the emotions will have a huge reflection on both performance and results.

And that’s why I prefer to see each trapshooter I meet as a friend (until they prove differently, at least).

And that’s exactly why I feel the community as a family. I feel lucky to have an extra family – my trapshooting family. I feel privileged to share my “adoptive” family with my real family. I feel honored to count in my extra-family amazing people.

I can only hope I will always make them proud and I will always be worthy of their friendship.

And I am amazingly glad I will meet some of them soon, in Ohio. And not any – but the best: William’s ‘other Mom’ (Gen) and older ‘brother’ (Cody). We have not worked out the translation of these relationships beyond William, we are just happy to count them as our good friends from down south.

Slowly the days start to return to normal – it is still a frenzy, mostly because the weeks before Provincials I had to push things down the list and they are creeping slowly, but surely, back on the top.

I’ve been looking back at the Provincial days, and the whole year and I still can hardly believe the whole competition season is almost behind us. There will be one more major competition, Cardinal Classic next week, and then the LTS Summer Games on the 29th… and… that’s basically it for 2009. We will have a few 2010 shoots in September: the major St. Thomas on the long weekend, Toronto International the week after, and a Hamilton Gun Club competition on the 19th.

What do I remember the most of this year (I am referring to the competition year, of course)? I will forever remember the impression our Gold Teams made wherever we went. And I am not talking about colour here, or not only – because the colour itself was a great distinction. I am talking mostly about the feeling we shared – of being together, of being a Team, proudly representing what our school stands for: Safety – Performance – Fun!

The next I will forever remember how all the people came to recognize us – to all gentlemen and ladies @ the Provincials (and not only) who stopped by just to say ‘Good job!’: we thank you for your nice words. Every single word of encouragement matters to us and we appreciate yours. To understand the depth of our appreciation you should understand the state of the trapshooting community in Canada, and especially in Southern Ontario. Look around yourself when you are next at your club and see what is the average age of the shooters… it is a sport that seems to get older and older every year. And we need the advice of our excellent shooters, we need it badly and we need to pass it to next generations. What we are trying with the school is to bring the new generations into the sport. What we will need from our community is to share their wisdom with the new generations, to be gentle and helpful. Remember when you first started before you criticize next time! Like Thumper’s Dad taught his son: ‘If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all!’ And again – to all that found in their hearts to say something nice: THANK YOU!

I will probably remember as a blur all the activity at each and every shoot. All the fun we had on the range, competing or in practice. I will wonder how I could ever shoot all year without real practice and I will try to practice some more into the new year.

I will remember that results are not important, what really counts is performance. I will remember with distinctive love the day when I finally ‘got it together’ again. It’s the next best feeling after the Zone. I will keep a precious memory of my round of practice this last weekend when Florin and I played some games in handicap and I will try to remember forever that I can, indeed, blast targets from 27 yards; even better than at 22… It will come in handy in the future when I will gain some ‘real estate’ for my handicap.

And last, but not least, I will remember our friends and trapshooting family: it is growing larger and stronger every year and it makes me happy.

And I will always remember William’s smile when we tell him we have to go to the range or the seriousness he takes his miniCoach job on. Only last week, after quietly listening to Head Coach explaining a set of information about ammo, trap events, and what not to a group of nice ladies and gents trying trapshooting for the first time, he politely asked if he can ask a question. When permission was (graciously) granted by his Dad, what does miniCoach ask? We could hardly believe his 6 years could come up with something as serious and as complex as this notion, but here you are: “When you are shooting doubles, can you use different type of shells for the first shot and second one?” This shows he does, indeed, listen to all that comes from Daddy and Mommy… And after a moment of gaping at him (all 11 adults present) he received his answer in all the seriousness it asked for.

Now you have to ask him the same question and listen to the answer – I promise you’ll have a blast!

This is an entry that I am “borrowing” from my personal blog (made for family and written mainly in Romanian) and posted last year after the Great Lakes Grand, in Mason, Michigan. God willing we’ll have the chance to return there next year, we had to skip it in 2009 and we missed it dearly. Mason is my second most preferred place to be (after #1: Elysburg, PA) and we love competing there.

While translating it I realized it could have been written as well this year: everything in there holds as much truth today as it was last year.

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Any athlete with an ounce of self-respect (and entertaining some thoughts of winning) must have a coach.

Sometimes the coach is one of the parents – at least until the ‘offspring’, having displayed some talent, either surpasses his ‘coach’ or starts having an attitude. At that point, a new coach should be found.

Sometimes, especially when the athlete starts later in his life, the coach is a friend with good intentions (but usually with zero coaching skills) – this friend will come with lots of advice that might or might not make any sense. When we add a husband-wife relationship into this unfortunate mix, the disaster is imminent, because the athlete will feel now he/she can answer back to the ‘unofficial’ coach. In cases like this one, it’s preferable to find a new coach. In the majority of the cases, in fact, what gets dropped is not the coach, but the actual sport.

And every now and then, it happens that the coach is, in fact, a skilled one and knows what to tell his/her student. Even in this case, we have quite a few ramifications: the athlete has both talent and passion; the athlete has only talent, and no passion; the athlete has no natural talent, but lots of passion.

In our case, God gave us an ideal situation: the skilled coach and the athlete with some natural talent and tons of passion.

I, being for the past 3 years (I can’t believe there have only been 3 – it seems like forever) the student with open ears and no mouth (meaning: listening and not answering back), had only to listen to his advice: smile to all and do only what I tell you – and today we have a coach very happy with his student and a student very happy with her coach. And both very happy with the results.

In our case, I have to be honest and say that he knows not only what has to be done, but also how to tell the student what has to be done. The ones that know me can tell right away it’s pretty difficult to make me do something that’s illogical (or only seems illogical or if I don’t understand ‘why’ it has to be done). And somehow he managed to make me advance, to improve my technique one step at a time – up to today’s performances.

It’s next to impossible to explain what these trophies [note: the trophies where my first ones, won at the Great Lakes Grand in the spring of 2008] mean for me, for us.

It’s not about the win, it’s about the climb – the exposure, the recognition I won in a blink.

It’s not about the trophies – it’s about opportunities: to know you can do something that puts you on the top is an incredible feeling. In this specific case, the performance is even more special: it is equally distributed between Category (Lady) and Class. I wasn’t only the top Lady in a couple of events; I was also the top shooter in my class in a couple of events. And hearing a nice gentleman asking his friend: ‘who’s this girl that beat me?!’ is not only funny, it is purely amazing.

It’s not about the results – it is about performance: and in my quest to climb to the top of the mountain there were always at least 2 people involved: the coach and the student. The ones that think they can achieve high performances without any help whatsoever, just by themselves, are either not very smart, or extremely arrogant. Without my beloved coach, I wouldn’t have started in this sport, I wouldn’t have advanced as much as I did, I wouldn’t have performed as well I did. The advice right before entering the line was precious to the last sound – especially his calming advice before Event #6, Doubles, when I found myself in a double ‘peril’ situation: sudden squad leader (nobody took position 1) while shooting with one of our own legends, Paul Shaw.

If today I can take my post and subconsciously prepare myself – the merit is his for knowing what to tell me and mine for listening and doing exactly what he told me to. If today I can look at the targets and know how to adjust my eye/gun hold – the merit is his for going through different scenarios with me and mine for asking questions and storing his answers. If today I can clear my mind for long enough to focus on the main task (one target at a time) – the merit is his for knowing how to get me to this phase and mine for getting there.

And if today I am proud of myself and my own performance I am equally proud of him, my coach. And my pride is triple: he’s not only the best coach I ever met, but he’s my better half and an amazing father.