Dean Trew was the top individual shooter in the Pittsburgh and Suburban Rifle League and won another two state titles.
Southwestern Pennsylvania has a long and storied history as a training ground for top-notch precision rifle shooters.
It’s history that continues to be made, too.
Dormont-Mt. Lebanon Sportsmen’s Club in Canonsburg won another national championship this summer.
That’s two in a row, although in different disciplines.
Last year Dormont-Mt. Lebanon’s “Gold” squad won the NRA Metric three-position indoor national championship.
This year it won the NRA conventional indoor championship. It’s a four position event, where rifle shooters are scored fired standing, kneeling, sitting and prone.
Dormont-Mt. Lebanon scored a 1,579 out of a possible 1,600, with 111 bull’s eyes. That edged out teams from Idaho and Michigan, each of whom scored 1,578.
Logan Charles led the way for the team with a score of 396 and 30 bull’s eyes. Dean Trew was next with 395 and 29, followed by Jeff Charles with 395 and 27 and Sarah Fink with 393 and 25.
Dormont-M. Lebanon’s win was it second conventional indoor championship. The first came in 2004, when the team became the first civilian squad to earn the victory in nearly a quarter century.
Meanwhile, Dormont-Mt. Lebanon’s “Blue” team came in third in this year’s three-position event.
The U.S. Olympic National Training Center’s “Citius” team won the event with a score of 4,569, followed by the Vancouver Rifle & Pistol Club in Washington with a score of 4,514.
Dormont-Mt. Lebanon Blue scored 4,499.
Trew was the top scorer there with 1,146 points, followed by Ray Harvey with 1,142, Tom Benedict with 1,115 and Curtis Turner with 1,096.
Several local teams, meanwhile, did well in other classifications.
In the second master team division, Frazier-Simplex Rifle Club finished seventh overall with a score of 1,564, with 94 bull’s eyes. Dormont-Mt. Lebanon Silver was 10th and Murrysville Rifle Club was 1th.
In the marksman sharpshooter class, Dormont-Mt. Lebanon Bronze won first overall with a score of 1,538 out of 1,600, with 77 bull’s eyes.
And individual awards?
Local shooters earned plenty of those, as well.
Trew was crowned state champion in four-position shooting – and finished fourth overall nationally — with a score of 793 with 63 bull’s eyes.
He also repeated as state champion – and came in sixth overall nationally – in three-position shooting. There, he had a score of 1,146.
Harvey placed 12th nationally in three-position, while former Frazier-Simplex shooter William Mengon placed 11th overall and won the National Service Champion award.
Mengon also won the four-position service champion and finished 15th overall.
Sylvia Dreistadt of Frazier-Simplex came in second in the local sectional and was 32nd overall. Sarah Fink, formerly of the Irwin Post 228 rifle team and now a freshman at Morehead State University, was third in the local sectional and 36th overall.
Rifle shooters locally
Of course, the local teams competing on the national scale have their own league. Six compete in the Pittsburgh and Suburban Rifle League.
The Pittsburgh and Suburban Rifle League has been offering competition for decades.
It held its annual banquet this summer to honor the rifle shooters who did well in its own competitions.
Frazier-Simplex won as a team, finishing 19-1. One members who picked up plenty of hardware was Becca Spencer.
Spencer, an Avella High School graduate now shooting on scholarship at Akron University, finished third in the league with a 296.25 average. She also won high woman and high junior iron sights and took second place standing in the league this season.
She also got a “300 Club” belt buckle for firing her first and second 300s this past season.
Trew won prone, kneeling and standing this season, took third place sitting and had three 300s.
Most amazingly, he was high individual for the year with a 297.84 average. It’s something Trew said he’s “been chasing this” for more than 30 years.
He’d finished as high as second and third place several times, but never taken the top spot until now.
“I was told at the banquet that I’m the oldest first-time winner in modern league history, which dates to the 1930s, at age 49, and I’m now a part of the only father-and-son duo to have ever won the league,” Trew said.
His father, R. Barry Trew, won the league a number of times between the mid-1950s and 1970s, and still holds the record for the most consecutive league individual championships with 10.
Becca Spencer was the Pittsburgh and Suburban Rifle League’s top female shooter.
