OSTA Board needs to step up!

You won’t find a person that loves Ohio Trapshooting more than me. Leadership lately has been very weak. The goals of the board should never be making a profit but repeating activities that drains the org of valuable resources is killing the OSTA.

How long will we see activities that create huge losses?

 

Jim,
I was very discouraged by the Boards recent decision to gut the Champion of Champions program by replacing the wonderful Shamrock bag trophies and cash that were used as a carrot to draw shooters to the small clubs around the state. All the money for those trophies came from the old Zone shoot Lewis class give aways. It was a budget neutral program but that part has long been forgotten. Further, Tuesday’s trophies at the state shoot will continue to be open and trophies are being cut from Friday’s events. These things on their own may seem small but the cumulative effect is the continued degradation of what once was the best state shoot in the country. Small thinking.

 

Details would be nice. How is OSTA supporting programs that have been proven failures? Let’s not assume everyone here has all the inside information some of you seem to possess.

 

Don
I just received a letter from the OSTA stating that the CH of CH is still offered. The only difference is Shamrock Bags for the Open Champion instead of the $500.
Sara

 

Sara,
I was told the Board has decided to use a less expensive trophy for all the C of C category winners. Not sure what those trophies will be. Also see they are switching to a $10 Lewis. Not well thought out.

 

I have heard the trophies and the Zone Shoots are hurting the OSTA. How will the $10 Lewis help?

 

not at all

 

I suggest dumping the zone shoot idea and focusing more on promoting the state shoot. Jmho

 

I always thought Zone Shoots helped some clubs make money to stay open. The State Shoots only help one club.

Ron B

 

If your club isn’t selected for a zone shoot your club won’t be throwing registered targets that day. Sucks to be those guys.

 

With a limited number of shooters attending any shoots this kinna make sense. Should draw more people to the zone shoots. It’s only a couple days or one weekend the “local clubs” would be effected.

But I get it, came from corporate so it’s a horrible idea. What were those morons thinking.

 

I heard today that the osta might be reconsidering it's $10 Lewis Class move at the next osta meeting. I don't know if they are going back to the old program or cutting down to $5. Any board member know anything and be willing to comment?

 

Originally, as in many years ago as I understand the Zone Shoots were started to give something back to the shooters for supporting the OSTA. Then the Zone Shoot consisted of 100 16yd targets with I believe $10 was added to the Lewis Class for every entry and the shoot was very well attended. In later years handicap and doubles were added in a fall Zone Shoot and at some time the singles were changed to 200 targets and lately changed back to 100 targets. Now with the democrats runaway inflation, shells expensive and often hard to find reloading components expensive and in some cases very hard to find, sometimes impossible to find I understand the Zone singles is going back to 200 targets. Why?

Troublemkr stated that the Zone Shoot only takes 1 weekend away from the other clubs which is true, but the Cardinal shoots take several more weekends and how many prime summer weekends are left for the other clubs having registered shoots that are trying to stay afloat? When attending the small clubs Meat Shoots many people are talking about completely giving up registered shooting. Also in my opinion cutting back on the $25 Lewis Class at our State Shoot will be very detrimental.

Dave Berlet

 

JMHO…..

The two rules that should be guiding the shotgun sports.

The sport is too expensive to shoot for silly points. Figure out how to put a glimmer of hope of a big payout in the minds of the average shooter.

Make the game sporting.

 

Guys-
Very good discussion here- and I want to make some points concerning small clubs surviving that are right in the same stream of what you are talking about, but I'll start another thread so maybe we can get some other small clubs to chime in.

 

Changing the lewis class from $25 to $10 at the state shoot is a big mistake in my opinion. Just my opinion. It is an OPTION and is not required to play.

 

Do you people think that the 10 dollar Lewis class will bring in double the shooters and allow more people to get involved. Seems like the 25 dollar lewis was not drawing a large number of shooters. Ok so maybe 15 but 25 per event was stiff for a bunch of the shooters.

 

If there’s no money in it nobody will play it. $25 is good.

 

Boy this line of thinking never gets old. I hate to toss a bucket of facts onto a good fairy tale but let’s check the numbers.

2022 Ohio State Shoot Event 14 Hcp Championship
580 shooters entered the event
355 of them played the $25 Lewis - total $8875.00 in the pot

If the Lewis option was $10 it would have taken 100% of the 580 shooters PLUS 10 bucks EACH from another 307 spectators just get CLOSE to the same amount in the pot.

I wonder how well that plan is gonna work?

 

I agree that cutting the entry for the Lewis would have about the same results as cutting your throat. Don's figures compute out to 61% entered the $25 Lewis in our state handicap. If the entry is reduced to $10 I believe the entry will be less than 15% to play this option. To enter any option shooters want a chance to receive a decent payoff if they hit the option. If they hit the option and see that there wasn't a decent payoff they will simply not play that option in the future. 61% is a huge number for participation in any option. If it is working DON'T screw with it. The Ohio State Shoot is one of the few shoots left that shooters consider a money shoot and if you take out the money you are going to take away quite a few shooters. Cheaper isn't always better.

Dave Berlet

 

Just because Michigan has kicked OSU's ass the last two years doesn't mean the OSTA should follow Michigan's Trap Shooting idea's anywhere. They screwed Michigan up worse years ago than the OSTA is currently doing to Ohio today. The race to the bottom is pretty crowded.

 

I hardly ever play any options. My old bill fold might open for a $10 Lewis Class but never for $25. If you want to never hit the lewis class, just break the score that I break.

 

Brad - I’m genuinely curious what happened at MTA that makes you say that. I know that there aren’t typically big purses to speak of, at least not compared to some at Ohio. But it’s been that way as far as I can remember (started registering at Mason in ‘04) so it’s just always been that way for me. Just wondering what it was like before and why it might’ve changed.

 

Michigan had years of miss management before you started shooting. The MTA grounds were paid for at least 2 times that I know of. I think it was 2004 or 2005 that was the last year that I shot MTA and it might have even been 2003. I won about 10K as the Great Lakes Grand the last year I shot but the MTA management was into pushing no money shooting and got what they wished in the years to follow. Icould read the handwriting on the wall and bever went back.

When you shot a lot you could read a program and get a really good idea what kind of money shoot you would be going to. Not only did michigan strip the money theor trap help went to shit, Michigan used to have the best trap help in the country and became the worst in a short time. Not only that Michigan used to have the best food of any trap club we shot at and that went the way of the help. I say club management was what really caused the down fall of a great club to shoot ATA at.

Michigan used to have 800 to 1000 shooters but those shooters went down in number and the one thing you need for a good money shoot is lots of shooters. I think you should look up some old Trap & Field's from the 60's through the 90's and read about Michigans' shoots. You'll be able to read what I'm talking about.

Dave Berlet has shot more targets at Michigan and he can really tell you the ins and outs of MTA history better than me.

 

I don't remember the exact year, but I attended the first state shoot at the new Michigan home grounds. I believe it was 68 or 69 and it was the result of a lot of work by a dedicated group of volunteers and donations of time and equipment and money donated. Names that come to mind are Driggs, Williams, Hickey are some of the names that I remember, but there were several others who were quite involved in bringing this site to operation. In the beginning this was a great facility and they threw good targets, managed a good program' had good food, had good options, great trap help, and the new Michigan Home Grounds was defiantly a place to go. After several years and different folks on the board things were changing and in my opinion things were not as great as they had been in the past. Target setting, cheaping the options, not as good trap help, hit and miss food, and so on. After a few years and the loss of quite abit of attendance things started to come back as the targets improved and it seemed like the management was more interested in making this a good shoot again but the options have not come back to the former level. With costs going up having cheap options is not the way to go. It seems that many of the options are entered by so few that they end up being refunded. Now it is a great place to shoot, but the food and options need a little work. I attended the first 20+ state shoots and many since including many Great Lakes shoots and some team shoots. I remember the years when on the championship days of the state shoot all 40 traps were used and kept busy until late in the afternoon. It is my hope that the Michigan shoots and many other shoots can come back to their former glory.

Over the years I have seen our great sport suffer so many changes and it seems that many have not been for the betterment of our sport.

Dave Berlet

 

Appreciate the insight, Brad and Dave. It’s always good to hear where it might’ve went wrong. I get the feeling that things with the MTA are trending positive and hope I’m not wrong. I’d like to see all 10 banks running for ATA targets again sometime soon.