CAMP PERRY, OHIO – It doesn’t happen too often in sports, but sometimes the average competitor gets an opportunity to compete straight up with the perennial champs and bring home the prize.

With a little help from the CMP Handicap System, Ross Chesley, of East Grand Rapids, Michigan and Ron Hawkins, of Hanover, Massachusetts did just that in the President’s Pistol and National Trophy Individual matches, respectively, Sunday, 13 July.

Both shooters will be receiving customized Beretta 92F service pistols, donated by firearms designer Dr. Nicolas Abrishamian of Mountain Competition.

In President’s Pistol, Chesley, 42, shot a 346-6X actual aggregate score adjusted to a 440-6X with the handicap. Chesley’s effort exceeded his normal average by enough points to boost him into the top position.

“I made friends with the mud!” Chesley said afterward. “That way it wasn’t a distraction.”

Chesley said recent rain had turned footing treacherous at the firing line and rather than letting it bother him, he settled in early and dealt with it.

“It was a fantastic event,” he said. “Once the mud was no longer an issue, I just concentrated on making good shots – and having a lot of fun!”

The East Grand Rapids, Michigan resident began shooting hard ball in 2000 with his dad and said as he shot more he began to make steady improvement and having more fun.

He also credited the Pistol Small Arms Firing School for opening his eyes to new things.

“Learning in that environment with a different pistol took my mind off the gun and allowed me to concentrate on making better shots,” Chesley said. “I learned to be aggressively smooth on the trigger.”

“Being coached by professional members of the military is really nice. What they observed allowed me to make adjustments that I would not have made on my own.”

In National Trophy Individual, Hawkins, 53, shot a 257-0X actual and his score improved to 324-0X after factoring in his shooter rating.

An admitted pistol “newbie,” Hawkins has been shooting since 2005 and this year marked his third trip to Camp Perry. He and a group of shooting buddies from the Hanover area have made the National Matches an annual trip.

“I had no idea I had won anything,” Hawkins said. “I looked at the results in the middle of the pack, where I normally fall, and I couldn’t find my scores. I just figured my score card got lost or something.

“Then as I’m packing up the truck, a couple of shooting buddies came over and asked if I was hanging around for the awards ceremony. I said, no I’m feeling pretty good so I’m going to get a head start back.”

Hawkins said he was stunned to learn that his performance vaulted him into the top spot in NTI Handicap.

“This was the first year I came out with the goal of making President’s or earning leg points. That didn’t happen, but things just came together for me,” Hawkins added.

“I think it’s a great thing that Dr. Nick is doing. I compete against myself and middling to average competitors normally have no chance of winning at Perry,” he said. “It turned out to be a great experience and now others will want to make the trip.”

As Chesley’s and Hawkin’s reward, renowned gun builder and Mountain Competition partner Nicolas Abrishamian, M.D., will build him a highly-accurized 92F featuring a KKM barrel with a 1 in 32 twist, a Springco recoil system, a Teflon-coated frame and “Dr. Nick’s custom honed trigger, hammer and sear group”. The pistol also features a radius rail system devised by “Dr. Nick.” The donated pistol normally retails for more than $2,150.

A physician for more than 20 years, Dr. Abrishamian said he believes that new shooters who are making significant progress in their shooting efforts deserve a reward for improving.

“I’m glad that they’re coming up in the ranks. Because I saw the scores; some have come up as much as 200 points. It’s an enormous difference – they’re really trying and they deserve something for that,” Dr. Abrishamian said.

“When I started in this game at Camp Perry in 1990, it was very difficult because I came here as an unclassified shooter. I was shooting everywhere except on my target!”

“At the end if I had a good target, l didn’t get rewarded for it. I remember what that felt like,” he said.

“I’ve been giving guns and prizes away to shooters since 1996,” he said. “Ed Grove and I ran a match in Maryland called the All States National Pistol Championship for 10 years.”

“I used to give eight guns away along with 96 trophies – and did that for 10 straight years.”

Dr. Abrishamian, who is a biochemist and physician specializing in reading and analyzing blood chemistry at Chester Woods CFS Center PA in Chester, New Jersey, is a veteran pistol shooter who relies on shooting and gun-building as a “therapeutic escape” from his intense medical profession of dealing with disease.

“It’s pretty challenging,” he said. “All of those with rare diseases that can’t be figured out eventually end up in our offices. Everybody who walks in has something very seriously wrong – they’ve been to nine or 10 doctors, they’ve been through the hospitals and ours is the last stop.”

“About 75 percent of those we treat have some form of cancer – either pre- or post-chemo,” he said.

Dr. Abrishamian served in the U.S. Army Special Forces from 1973 to 1976 and is the son of an Army colonel, now deceased.

“My passion has always been guns,” he proclaimed. “I would shoot with my father and complain that guns wouldn’t always shoot straight.”

“I learned right away that it’s not just the shooter. It has to do with the weapon and ammunition and everything that goes with it,” he added.

Upon completion of his tour of duty, he studied medicine at the University of Frankfurt in Germany. While there, he sought work in the Heckler and Koch factory in neighboring Oberndorf. The University and H&K officials arranged for him to learn weapon fabrication and design on weekends in the factory.

“While I was going to school for nine years in Frankfurt, every Saturday and Sunday I didn’t waste time. Like a hungry man, I learned everything I could while I was there.”

“I worked on the G3 submachine gun and learned very quickly that my best effort wasn’t good enough. The Germans are known for their precision and I found out first hand why that is,” Dr. Abrishamian said.

His interest in gun fabrication and design eventually culminated in the creation of Mountain Competition. Due to strict state firearms laws in New Jersey, he built a second home in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania complete with a 2,500-square-foot basement. It soon filled with gun-building machinery and his firearm accurizing side-business took off.

“I initially came up with a rail system for the Beretta. The frame and slide never touch each other, meaning the frame never gets battered and that results in longer life and improved accuracy.”

“Just like the German railroad guns, when these parts move in a straight line, the twisting motion of the gun is eliminated, giving you a chance for a second shot in rapid fire. You fire the gun, it goes straight up and falls right back into place for the next shot,” he explained.

Chesley says friends and fellow shooters have come out of the woodwork since his handicap victory wanting to know more about CMP shooting and learning opportunities.

“I’m thinking about coming back for Rifle SAFS,” he added.

Kowa Spotting Scopes http://www.kowascope.com donated two spotting scopes for the second ranking Handicap competitors in the President’s and NTI matches. John Kittleson, of Milton, Wisconsin, was the second ranking competitor in the President's Handicap. Kittleson also received a a Lock-N-Load Progressive Metallic Reloading Press donated by Hornady http://www.hornady.com/. PO1 Marco Chavez, USN, of Chesapeake, Virginia, was the second ranking competitor in the NTI and won the second spotting scope donated by Kowa Spotting Scopes.

The CMP Handicap System is a way to rank all competitors in a match according to how they performed on the day of a match relative to their established level of ability. In a handicap competition, the competitor who does the best job of exceeding his or her average becomes the winner.

The CMP Competition Tracker system that records match results and displays them on the Internet now has a massive database of results that provides the statistical basis for this new system. Every score fired by competitors in the National Matches, CMP Eastern and Western Games, sanctioned EIC matches, sanctioned as-issued military rifle matches that report scores and sanctioned three-position air rifle matches is now recorded in this system. This makes it quite easy to establish averages and from those averages to derive competitor handicaps.

The handicaps are based on a factor of 1.000, which reflects the average scores for the greatest number of shooters. Shooters with handicaps over 1.000 are above that level, while shooters below 1.000 are new and developing shooters who have not reached that level yet.

Each match a shooter competes in his or her handicap is adjusted up or down depending on how well they did against the average shooter in that match. The more matches a shooter competes in the better his or her handicap reflects their skill level. A shooter's handicap is based on their average performance over all matches they competed in over the last two years.

A system to adjust for matches with high winds or poor conditions was added that is based on how all competitors in a match perform relative to their established averages.

The Handicap Ranking list for the 2008 National Matches Presidents Pistol Match where Ross Chesley won his Mountain Competition pistol can be viewed at http://clubs.odcmp.com/cgi-bin/report_eventAward.cgi?matchID=3417&eventID=1&awardID=3. The Handicap Ranking list for the 2008 National Matches NTI Pistol Match where Ron Hawkins won his Mountain Competition pistol can be viewed at http://clubs.odcmp.com/cgi-bin/report_eventAward.cgi?matchID=3417&eventID=3&awardID=10.

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