Coaches Newsletter
Posted On: 09-10-2019
Coaches,
You are receiving the inaugural newsletter from the new Missouri Youth Sport Shooting Alliance (MYSSA) website. On the 10th of each month we will send a newsletter to your email address. If you were previously receiving an email occasionally from MYSSA, this new newsletter will replace those emails.
Our purpose with this newsletter is to make you a better-informed and more knowledgeable coach. From time to time we’ll include information that should help you help your athletes as you strive to better their shooting performance.
This newsletter will include all trigger sports including shotgun, rifle, handgun, and airgun.
In the past, emails from MYSSA only went to the head coach of each team. In order to better communicate with all coaches, we ask you as a head coach send us names and emails of your assistant coaches, team managers, or parent volunteers. Please send that information to Dr. David Vaught at [email protected]
On the MYSSA website www.moyouthshooting.org we have a page for shooter recognition. We’d love to highlight one of your athletes. If you have an athlete who has been recognized for excellence in shooting, academic achievement, community service, or some other notable activity please send a short description and photo if possible to Dr. Vaught. Perhaps you have a parent who would be willing to write a short story on what their son or daughter’s experience with a shooting sport has done to change their life in some way. I know those stories are out there.
If you as a coach have some experience with your program that would benefit other coaches, we’d love to hear about that. Send us a short story, perhaps less than 200 words and we’ll publish your story on our website blog.
On our website is an Events Page. We publish as many youth shooting events as we can find information. If your team participates in local or regional events, please send us the information so we can get the word to other interested teams. We’ll publish event results on our Youth Shooters page if those results are made known to us.
Any interested member of the public including your athletes can subscribe to the MYSSA Newsletter on our website. At the bottom of each page is a form to submit a name. This is a separate general newsletter for anyone. The newsletter email you are receiving today is specifically designed for trigger sports coaching and is not sent to the general public.
Thanks for your support.
Jan Morris, Executive Director
Missouri Youth Sport Shooting Alliance
September Coaches Tip:
Maybe you have never read this or for that matter, even heard of this. Back in the day, there was an old theory as to how much a gun should weigh. In an article published in Field and Stream in April of 2016, Phil Bourjaily authored some interesting history. It turns out, English gun maker W.W. Greener had a formula that a gun should weigh 96 times the shot load of a shotgun shell. Simply, the math worked out that a 12 gauge shotgun shooting an 11/8 load would weigh in at 6.75 pounds; while a 20 gauge shotgun shooting a 7/8 load would be about 5.25 pounds.
More to the point though is what does your shotgun weigh and are you physically capable of lifting it 100 times. Many modern guns reach eight pounds and we know weight is the only thing that saves our shoulder from recoil. More weight, less recoil. So given an eight pound gun and a 100-shot event and simple math says you just lifted 800 pounds. Another thought is you just loaded 17 feed sacks of grain into the barn.
I hate to think, but an object lesson often seen, kids get tired as the shoot reaches into the 75th shot. I would hate to think someone lost an event because they were too tired. I highly recommend each practice you ask your kids to raise and mount the gun 100 times before shooting. Then while at home have your shooters do the same every night. Eventually, as the Olympic athletes know, you get some muscle memory that carries you through long tough events.
Try it and see if you do not at least eliminate one cause for misses and failures to reach the winners podium.
Dr. David Vaught