Six for Scot - 2025 National Champions
Our motto for 2025 was "Six for Scot" after losing one of our biggest family members and supporters in Scot Ritchie earlier this year.
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Mission Accomplished, Scot! Six straight national championships.
Six Straight National Championships!
We all knew that we had started slow in Sporting Clays on Wednesday, and while we came back stronger on Thursday to finish 3rd, we still lost by over 20 birds.
Thankfully, finishing Skeet with a 199, 198 and 197 to win that National Championship kept us in the mix. Our kids didn’t know the scores, but they knew we needed a strong performance in Trap.
All they did was come out like this: Curt Jones 100, Mills Hollis 100, Landyn Fries 99, Chase Buerger 98, Lucas McKenzie 97. That’s right, they missed 5 out of 500 Trap targets. By far our best day ever on the Trap field. In the new scoring format, we get to take our top 5 scores overall, not just the top squad, so we had good backup scores from Emaline Haddad (95), Marshall Kent (96) and Georgia Kennedy (94).
That set us up with the slightest of cushion behind the Hunting Hill Hawkeyes out of Pennsylvania, but the Pella Christian Eagles from Iowa were still in the mix and they shot a few hours before us on Saturday. The PC Eagles have long been stellar skeet and trap shooters (and tied us for Skeet this year), and they did what they had to with a good round on Saturday. As our kids took the field, we were 479 birds behind the PC Eagles for the Championship.
That meant our top 5 could only miss 20 birds – a 96 average – for the title. A few years ago, Zac and I would’ve been nervous, but not with these battle-tested Warriors. Curt Jones shot another 100 straight for a perfect 200, Mills Hollis dropped one for a 99 and 199 total. Chase Buerger shot 97 for a 195 total. Landyn Fries closed with a 50 straight for a 95 and a 194 total, and Senior Georgia Kennedy cashed in one of our insurance spots with a clutch 99 to finish at 193. Final Score: Forest City Juniors 2113 – PC Eagles 2105.
Eight bird spread to win Six for Scot!
Our HOA Scores for the Overall Win:
Sporting Clays:
Curt Jones 184
Walker Peters 177
Chase Buerger 177
Skeet:
Chaz Palmer 199
Gavin Walmsley 198
Caleb Vo* 197
Trap:
Curt Jones 200
Mills Hollis 199
Chase Buerger 195
Landyn Fries 194
Georgia Kennedy 193
Talk about depth, we had 9 shooters contribute to the 11 total scores. Notice the asterisk by Caleb Vo’s name. Caleb shot 97-100 in Skeet to contribute to the HOA score. Caleb is also only in 7th Grade and is the first Intermediate-Advanced shooter to ever have a qualifying score for an HOA Team National Championship! He also won a dramatic shootoff on the final shot to claim 2nd Place in the Intermediate Individual HOA Competition. He’s a little Fireball!
In 2023, we had just lost our strongest class ever coming off of a third National Championship with names like Schaaf, Williams, Pazderski, Neely, Porter, Kinlaw and Daters. We met in January with our Varsity team and let the sophomores in there know that they were going to really have to step up and help carry the load. We had a young 2nd year shooter on the team named Curt Jones, but he had sneaky promise. I told his teammates that day, “watchout for Curt Jones, he’s a killer.” After getting us back in the competition in Sporting Clays with a 96 on Thursday, he was down exactly 200 birds in the Men’s HOA Individual competition.
“So you’re saying there’s a chance . . .” No shooter from Forest City or Georgia had ever shot a 200 straight in Trap.
He made the first 100 look easy. No chips, no question marks. Just smoke.
Like all his teammates, he didn’t know where he stood in HOA standings, but I am sure he knew he was in the running, yet he was laser-focused on the team win. Smoke ball after smoke ball he went through them: 25, 25, 25. His usually emotionless dad remained almost calm on the outside, almost.
By the time the last 5 shots came around, we knew we had the team win, but when Curt smashed his last one, that was the icing on the cake. An impossible clutch 200 straight. A team National Championship and our second ever Individual HOA. The kid’s a killer . . . and now everyone knows it.
Also, on the individual side, we had two Ladies finish in the Top 5 for HOA Ladies. Emaline Haddad had a great week and finished just off the top of the podium in 2nd Place and Senior Georgia Kennedy finished 2 spots back in 4thPlace. Girl Power!
At the Rookie level, Hunter Brigdon finished 3rdin the HOA competition and teammate Hunter Vick just missed the podium finishing 6thOverall.
Last year’s leader Jackson Ferland just finished his first year at Georgia College and State University and came back for more on our collegiate squad. He had a great week as well and finished 2nd in the Collegiate HOA competition.
Trap:
Varsity: 3rd Place Team
Curt Jones 200
Mills Hollis 199
Chase Buerger 195
Landyn Fries 194
Georgia Kennedy 193
Curt Jones was part of a 4-way tie for 1st and finished 3rd after a shootoff.
Rookie: National Champions
Hunter Brigdon 185
Hunter Vick 160
John Klein 139
Alden Shahein 137
Mason Guerrettaz 112.
Collegiate: 3rd Place Team
Jackson Ferland 196
James Daters 191
Lawson Zhou 191
Aiden Strickland 184
Rut Missroon 160.
Doubles Skeet:
Varsity: National Champions
Lucas McKenzie 98
Chase Buerger 97
Gavin Walmsley 97.
4th Place: Lucas McKenzie
Ladies:
2nd Place Ayden McKenzie 96
5th Place Georgia Kennedy 96
Junior Varsity: 2nd Place
Frank Kamaleson 92
Oliver Whelan 90
Marshall Pedigo 88
Intermediate Advanced: National Champions
Rett Shurling 92
Caleb Vo 92
Chip Klein 91
Intermediate Entry: National Champions
Ansley McIntosh 99
Mac Reardon 93
Sam Thorpe 92
Ladies National Champion: Ansley McIntosh 99!
Individual
3rd Place Mac Reardon
4th Place Sam Thorpe
Rookies: National Champions
Hunter Brigdon 89
Hunter Vick 82
John Klein 67.
Individual
3rd Place Hunter Brigdon
5th Place Hunter Vick
Our Rookies finished with a clean sweep of National Championships at all 5 Events! They just coming in and Nighthawk Cribbs and his staff just keep training Champions. It’s amazing.
Six Straight National Championships. 18 squad and individual National Championships.
At some point you have to call it what it is, and this is a Dynasty.
I’ve said this before, but with all this winning, it could be easy to take it for granted, but don’t. There are over 330 teams and 3100 shooters at the tournament. It takes a lot to get one team or individual on top of the podium. We did that 18 times this year and over 80 times in the last 6 years. We have now tripled the record for consecutive National HOA Championships!
How do we do it? Well, I can’t tell you all the secrets, but a lot of it is pretty obvious. You have to have shooters with some talent and even more grit and want-to. You have to have the right coaches which we have in spades. You have to have parents and family who will support the kids with time, resources and love. Those are the big three, but you also have to have the best damn Gun Club in the Country behind you, and we know we have that and are proud to represent it. We remind our kids of our Club and our Membership every tournament. Wearing that logo on our jerseys and vests and the name Forest City on our chest means a lot to all of us and we love hearing the support from the Membership. Thank you all for your support.
2025 SCTP Nationals Men's HOA Champion
Congratulations to Curt Jones, who won the men's HOA Championship
at the 2025 SCTP Nationals.
Curt shot a 980 / 1000 across skeet, trap and sporting clays,
including a perfect 200 straight in trap.
2025 Nationals - Friday update
We finished up Skeet with quite a bang!
Gracen Garceau, Chaz Palmer, Harrison Tate and 7th Grade Phenom Caleb Vo all shot perfect 100 straights.
Palmer's 199 total tied him for the highest score in the nation and our first National Championship of the week along with teammate Emaline Haddad's 98-99 for 2nd Place in the Ladies Skeet Varsity Division.
Those two combined with a pair of 99s by Gavin Walmsley and we had our 6th consecutive National Championship at the Varsity level.
Senior Georgia Kennedy finished strong with a 195 which was good for 5th in the Ladies division.
Our Intermediate Advanced team was led by National Champion Caleb Vo who put his 197 together with Jacob Butler (193) and Chip Klein (188) for another National Championship! Jacob's 193 was good for 4th Place individually.
Moving along to the Intermediate Entry level, the team of Sam Thorpe (191) and first year shooters Mac Reardon (186) and Ansley McIntosh (180) claimed the National Championship with Sam and Ansley each finishing 2nd Overall in both Mens and Ladies divisions!
Our Rookies kept their winning streak alive for another National Championship led by Hunter Brigdon (189) and Hunter Vick (181) who finished 3rd and 4th individually and Zach Grassi with a 161.
Finally, our College shooters finished 3rd led by Jackson Ferland with a pair of 99s and Lawson Zhou and James Daters with 193s.
That’s 5 National Championships just in Skeet alone. There are more at Sporting and Super Sporting, but I have to get to our team meeting right now before we start shooting Trap at 10am!
College Signing
Two of the Forest City Juniors top shooters and recent graduates Chase Buerger and Georgia Kennedy, will be continuing their competition shooting with Clemson University.
On Friday June 13th, both Chase and Georgia signed with Clemson at a ceremony held at the Forest City Gun Club covered 5-stand building, along with Clemson head coach Rick Willey, family, friends and FCJ team members.
Congratulations Chase and Georgia!
2025 Raffle Winner
Congratulations to Club Member and team dad Todd Martin, who won the 2025 Forest City Juniors raffle and will be claiming a new Krieghoff K80 for his son and current FCJ IA shooter Hunter.
2025 SCTP Georgia State Championship
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Your Forest City Juniors had their most dominant performance in the 12 year history of the program this past weekend as we successfully defended our home turf . . . and then some!
The High Overall Team championship usually comes down to a handful of targets out of the potential score of 1100. This year we won by 31 targets, which is our widest margin of victory ever. With a score of 1079, we only dropped 21 targets across 11 rounds of 100. We swept all 3 disciplines at the Varsity level and we also won the Men’s HOA with Mills Hollis shooting an amazing 295/300 and the Ladies HOA with Landyn Fries shooting a 281/300 to win by one target.
The winning HOA team scores were:
Sporting: Curt Jones 98, Mills Hollis 97 and Chaz Palmer 94
Skeet: Sam Anderson 100, Lucas McKenzie 100 and Mills Hollis 99
Trap: Mills Hollis 99, Gavin Walmsley 99, Chase Buerger 98, Landyn Fries 98 and Lucas McKenzie 97
Ladies HOA
Let’s talk about Girl Power: We had 5 of the Top 10 Ladies:
1st Landyn Fries 281
4th Georgia Kennedy 275
5th Bailey Stokes 274
8th Emaline Haddad 271
10th Gracen Garceau 268
Men’s HOA
For the Men, we had 4 of the Top 10:
1st Mills Hollis 295
4th Lucas McKenzie 290
T-6th Curt Jones and Chaz Palmer 286
Each of the Sporting, Skeet and Trap Squads listed above was the Varsity Champion. In addition, the Varsity Super Sporting Squad of Mills Hollis, Chaz Palmer and Lucas McKenzie took 2 nd Place.
Individual Varsity Winners
Sporting Clays:
2nd Curt Jones 98
3rd Mills Hollis 97
Ladies
2nd Gracen Garceau 88
3 rd Georgia Kennedy 88
All State Team:
Curt Jones
Mills Hollis
Alternate: Chaz Palmer
The All State Team represents Georgia at the National Championships against all other States and consists of the Top 5 Scores and shooters 6-10 are Alternates.
Skeet
1st Sam Anderson 100
2nd Lucas McKenzie 100
3rd Mills Hollis 99
Ladies
3rd Landyn Fries 96
All State Team:
Sam Anderson
Lucas McKenzie
Mills Hollis
Alternate: Chaz Palmer
Trap
1st Mills Hollis 99
2nd Gavin Walmsley 99
Ladies
1st Landyn Fries 98
2nd Emaline Haddad 97
All State Team:
Mills Hollis
Gavin Walmsley
Landy Fries
Alternates; Chase Buerger, Lucas McKenzie and Emaline Haddad.
That’s right, 6 of the Top 10 scores out of over 500 shooters were our Forest City Juniors.
Super Sporting
3rd Mills Hollis 46
Ladies
1st Emaline Haddad 44
Junior Varsity
First year shooter Nora Lynes shot a 91 in Skeet to win Ladies JV Championship
Intermediate Advanced
Sporting Clays
3rd Place Squad:
Jacob Butler 93
Raj Kamaleson 90
Chip Klein 85
Individual:
2nd Jacob Butler 93
Skeet
2nd Place Squad:
Caleb Vo 95
Hunter Martin 94
Rett Shurling 93
Trap
2 nd Place Squad:
Rett Shurling 90
Caleb Vo 86
Chip Klein 86
Jacob Butler 84
Raj Kamaleson 84
Super Sporting
1st Place Squad:
Archer Ritchie 45
Hunter Martin 44
Caleb Vo 43
Individual:
T-3rd Archer Ritchie 45
IA – HOA
3 of our IA Shooters made the Top 10 for IA HOA:
5th Jacob Butler
7th Raj Kamaleson
9th Caleb Vo
Intermediate Entry
Sporting
2nd Place Squad:
Sam Thorpe 87
Ansley McIntosh 82
Mac Reardon 77
Individual:
3rd place Sam Thorpe 87
2nd Place Ladies Ansley McIntosh 82
Super Sporting
2nd Place Squad:
Sam Thorpe 42
Ansley McIntosh 38
Wynn Palmer 37
Individual:
2nd Place Sam Thorpe 42
2nd Place Ladies Ansley McIntosh 38
Skeet
1st Place Squad:
Mac Reardon 95
Ansley McIntosh 93
Sam Thorpe 89
Individual:
1st Place Mac Reardon 95
1st Place Ladies Ansley McIntosh 93
Trap
1st Place Squad:
Mac Reardon 87
Ansley Mcintosh 83
Wynn Palmer 78
Sam Thorpe76
Lucas Lockwood 73
Individual:
2nd Place Ladies Ansley McIntosh 83
Intermediate-Entry HOA
Lady Runner-Up Ansley McIntosh 258/300
4th Place Mac Reardon 259/300
Both first year shooters!!!
Rookies
Sporting Clays
2nd Place Squad:
Hunter Vick 82
Hunter Brigdon 78
Mason Guerrettaz 77
Individual:
2nd Hunter Vick 82
Skeet
1st Place Squad:
Hunter Vick 95
Hunter Brigdon 90
Mason Guerrettaz 74
Individual:
1st Hunter Vick 95
2nd Hunter Brigdon 90
Trap
2nd Place Squad:
Hunter Brigdon 90
Hunter Vick 77
Zach Grassi 65
Alden Shahein 57
John Klein 51
Individual:
1st Hunter Brigdon 90
Super Sporting
1st Place Squad:
Hunter Brigdon 40
Hunter Vick 37
Mason Guerrettaz 34
Individual:
1st Hunter Brigdon 40
HOA Rookie
1st Hunter Brigdon 258
3rd Hunter Vick 254
10th Zach Grassi 209
College
Last but not least, we can’t forget our Collegiate shooters. Our “Original Gangsters” have been busy “studying” all year and hardly have time to practice, but they always show up for tournament time. How do they do it? I don’t know if you have heard of the 10,000 hour principle, but some of these guys are very close if not there.
Sporting Clays
1st Place Squad:
Jackson Ferland 98
Owen Haas 97
James Daters 94
Individual:
1st Jackson Ferland 98
2nd Owen Haas 97
Skeet
2nd Place Squad:
James Daters 98
Aiden Strickland 97
Lawson Zhou 97
Trap
1st Place Squad:
Owen Haas 100
Jackson Ferland 98
James Daters 98
Aiden Strickland 90
Lawson Zhou 88
Individual:
1st Owen Haas 100
Super Sporting
1st Place Squad:
Jackson Ferland 49
Owen Haas 49
Lawson Zhou 44
Individual:
1st Jackson Ferland 49
3rd Owen Haas 49.
Collegiate HOA
1st Owen Haas 293
2nd Jackson Ferland 291
3rd James Daters 290
We couldn’t do this without our nearly 30 voluntary coaches who work week-in and week-out with these kids. As I always say, they are the backbone of our program and truly the secret to our success. Our coaching motto is “we are training Champions” and not one of us has not seen the impact this program has on the lives of these young me and women. I know it has made Jake the young man he is today.
Thank you also to all of our members who support and care for our team and these kids.
Finally, thanks for all of our sponsors and everyone who purchased raffle tickets this year.
Club Member and team dad Todd Martin won the raffle and will be claiming a new Krieghoff K80 for his son Hunter. Congrats!
2025 SCTP Southeast Regional Championship
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As a coaching staff who has won 5 consecutive National Championships, you always wonder what the next season is going to look like. All eyes are again on us as everyone is after the top dog. As the Savannah Morning News quoted then Gun Club President E. J. Kieffer in 1894, “the Forest City Gun Club never refuses a challenge of any kind,” and, based on this weekend, that still applies. After losing the SCTP Southeast Regional tournament last year by 5 targets, we were determined to get back to the top. We did that with room to spare winning the Team HOA by 16 targets and, for the first time ever, claiming the Triple Crown with Team HOA, Mens HOA by Mills Hollis with a stunning 292/300 and Ladies HOA by Emaline Haddad with 280/300. Aside from Emaline Haddad as Ladies HOA, 3 other Ladies made the Top 10 Ladies HOA: 5 th Landyn Fries, 8 th Gracen Garceau and 10 th Ayden McKenzie. Men's HOA Mills Hollis Ladies HOA Emaline Haddad It was, however, a sad weekend as we recently lost one of our dads and biggest overall supporters in Scot Ritchie. He was and will be missed, and we are dedicating our season to honor Scot this year as we go to Win Six for Scot!
The Team HOA consisted of the Top 3 Scores from all shooters in Skeet and Sporting and the Top 5 in Trap. Making the winning team were: Skeet: Mills Hollis (99), Sam Anderson (98) and Ayden McKenzie (98) Sporting: Mills Hollis (96), Chase Buerger (88) and Miles Carson (88) Trap: Emaline Haddad (99), Mills Hollis (97), Gracen Garceau (96), Lucas McKenzie (96) and Caleb Vo (95) (and he’s only a 7 th Grader!!!) As the team took shape in the early years, those scores would have all been by the same 5 shooters, but as you can see, the program has gotten so much deeper with 9 shooters contributing and many other tying some of those scores. We are deep across all our divisions! In our Varsity Division, we had the following honors:
Trap 1st Place Team: Emaline Haddad (99), Mills Hollis (97), Gracen Garceau (96), Lucas McKenzie (96), Landyn Fries (93) 1st Place Ladies Emaline Haddad (99), 2 nd Place Ladies Gracen Garceau (96) Skeet 1st Place Team: Mills Hollis (99), Marshall Kent (98) and Sam Anderson (98) Men: 1st Place Mills Hollis (99) Ladies: 1st Place Ayden McKenzie (98), 2 nd Place Landyn Fries (97) Sporting Clays 3rd Place Team: Mills Hollis (96), Chase Buerger (88) and Miles Carson (88) Mens: 1 st Place Mills Hollis (96) Ladies: 3 rd Place Emaline Haddad (87) Super Sporting 3rd Place Team: Mills Hollis (47), Lucas McKenzie (46) and Curt Jones (45) Mens: 3 rd Place Mills Hollis (47) Ladies: 3 rd Place Landyn Fries (43) Junior Varsity
Super Sporting 3 rd Place Team: Oliver Whelan (45), Walker Brown (41) and Sterling Reciar (39) Mens: 2 nd Place Oliver Whelan (45) New shooter Sterling Recicar also shot his first 25 straight in skeet. Intermediate-Advanced
We are historically strong in the Intermediate-Advanced division (7 th and 8 th Graders), which is always very competitive, and this year is no different. Sporting Clays 1st Place Team: Jacob Butler (86), Raj Kamaleson (81) and Caleb Vo (80) Men’s Individual Clean Sweep: 1 st Place Jacob Butler (86), 2 nd Place Raj Kamaleson (81) and 3 rd Place Caleb Vo (80) Skeet 1st Place Team: Chip Klein (97), Hunter Martin (95), Jacob Butler (95) Men: 1 st Place Chip Klein (97), Tied for 3 rd Place: Hunter Martin (95), Jacob Butler (95) and Raj Kamaleson (95) Trap 2nd Place Team: Caleb Vo (95), Chip Klein (85), Hunter Martin (82), Rett Shurling (80), Jacob Butler (77) Men: 3 rd Place Caleb Vo (95) Super Sporting 2nd Place Team: Jacob Butler (43), Archer Ritchie (40), Raj Kamaleson (39) Men: 2 nd Place Jacob Butler (43) Caleb Vo’s 266/300 was the top Intermediate HOA Score for the tournament and good to tie for 30 th of all Men shooters. Intermediate-Entry
Sporting Clays 3 rd Place Team: Deacon Fetterman (73), Mac Reardon (69) and Sam Thorpe (65) Men; 1 st Place Deacon Fetterman (73) Ladies: 1 st Place Ansley McIntosh (58) Super Sporting 3 rd Place Team: Sam Thorper (39), Deacon Fetterman (38) and Lucas Lockwood (37) Ladies: 1 st Place Ansley McIntosh (29) Skeet 1 st Place Team: Sam Thorper (89), Mac Reardon (89) and Ansley McIntosh (84) Mens: 2nd Place Sam Thorpe (89), 3 rd Place Mac Reardon (89) Ladies: 1 st Place Ansley McIntosh (84) Trap 1 st Place Team: Sam Thorper (85), Lucas Lockwood (81), Ansley McIntosh (79), Wynn Palmer (75) and Mac Reardon (69) Ladies: 1 st Place Ansley McIntosh (79) Rookies (5 th Grade and below)
Sporting Clays 1 st Place Team: Hunter Brigdon (81), Hunter Vick (68) and Mason Guerrettaz (57) Men: 1 st Place Hunter Brigdon (81) Skeet 1 st Place Team: Hunter Vick (88), Hunter Brigdon (88) and John Klein (78) Men: 1 st Place Hunter Vick (88), 2 nd Place Hunter Brigdon (88) Trap 1 st Place Team: Hunter Brigdon (91), Hunter Vick (78), Zack Grassi (62), John Klein (60) and Mason Guerrettaz (52) Men: 1 st Place Hunter Brigdon (91) Super Sporting 1 st Place Team: Hunter Brigdon (39), Zack Grassi (38) and Hunter Vick (32) Men: 1 st Place Hunter Brigdon (39), 2 nd Place Zack Grassi (38) |
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Member Organizations
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