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Simmons opens fire for third win on the season

John Simmons is pegging off first place finishes like he pegs off targets. The Whitehorse handgun shooter secured his third win of the season at an International Practical Shooting Confederation B.C.

John Simmons is pegging off first place finishes like he pegs off targets.

The Whitehorse handgun shooter secured his third win of the season at an International Practical Shooting Confederation B.C. double qualifier in Pitt Meadows over the weekend.

“I’m getting a lot better,” said Simmons. “I’m getting a lot smoother. My footwork is getting better too, I noticed from some videos.”

“There were very good stages. There were multiple ways to do every single stage. It was the kind of thing where it doesn’t matter if you’re right-handed or left-handed, there are so many ways to do the thing regardless of what hand you are.

“It’s good stage design - giving people lots of different options of how to do it.”

Simmons, who registered two first-place finishes at IPSC B.C. qualifier events in Terrace last month, took a third win on Sunday.

The master-level shooter out-performed a grandmaster in the IPSC competition, in which speed and accuracy are measured as shooters move through an obstacle course.

“That was quite the battle going on between me and the grandmaster Mark Hamrol,” said Simmons, who won three stages and placed second in the other three. “We were on the same squad, so we could see what each other was doing, so we knew what was happening. It made for an interesting day.”

The previous day Simmons took fourth in Saturday’s competition. He was the top master-level shooter, finishing behind three grandmasters. He was less than one per cent behind the third place finisher.

“It was a ridiculously low number,” added Simmons.

With another successful outing under his belt, Simmons was accepted on to B.C.‘s Gold Team for the national championships this August in Toronto. He’ll therefore be shooting with the best in B.C. and will be able to map out strategy with them for each stage.

Simmons was invited onto the Gold Team for the 2013 nationals, in which he placed 17th.

He placed fifth out of 66 shooters in the open division at last year’s nationals, held at Pitt Meadows.

The six-time Yukon steel-shooting champion also took fourth at the B.C. championships last season before heading to his first world championship in October. At the IPSC World Shoot Simmons placed 162nd out of 367 shooters in the open division and sixth out 25 of Canadians.

Contact Tom Patrick at

tomp@yukon-news.com