Monday, April 14, 2008 Rama: Happy times for a happy club By Karlon N. Rama Stage Five
I OWE much of what I have experienced and learned in the shooting sports to a lot of people.
They helped me become not only a better sportswriter but a more competent and responsible shooter and gun owner as well.
One among the many I owe a lot to is Adrian Tadena.
It was he who, as the president of the Front Sight Gun Club, invited me to my first shooting competition sometime in December of ’03.
I even wanted to decline. I didn’t write columns then, so I wasn’t really interested in matches. Besides, I bought a gun for personal protection, not fun and games.
Looking back, I am thankful I got swayed. For it was this competition that got me started in shooting.
I ran and gunned the entire four stages of that match held at the club’s firing range in Barangay Tubod, Mingnanilla.
Expectedly, I sucked. I landed third from the bottom of the 36 other shooters who took part in the competition.
With the way I earned a miss with almost every other shot I fired, one would expect that I’d crawl down a deep hole and whip myself for such a horrendous game.
Surprisingly, I found myself getting immensely interested in the sport instead.
It was impossible not to like the experience.
Club members, seeing a very green and wet-behind-the-ears journalist behind the firing line, went out of their way to give tips on how best to negotiate the courses.
Among them were Roy Abastillas who is now in the US, the ever-efficient Erning Reyes, the very affable Concord Fabillar, Brandon Lariosa, Boy Loreño, Venancio Tankay, Pablo Nacion, Pinky Larino, and many others whose names I can no longer recall.
They didn’t laugh at me or any other shooter who crashed and burned on the field. They laughed with us.
They offered high-fives to those who shot well, while those of us who performed poorly found ourselves laughing with them.
They didn’t look down on those not sporting the hundred-thousand-peso equipment. Neither did they care about who was in the lead and who was coming up from behind.
It wasn’t so much a competition as it was a fellowship.
Simply, here was a group of people genuinely having fun doing something that they all liked to do. All other concerns, at least for one day, be damned!
Subsequently, I became a card-carrying “Front Sighter.” One time, I even accompanied club members to Dumaguete to join the competition hosted by the local club there.
And while I eventually joined matches hosted by other clubs, the ones organized by the Front Sight were affairs I always looked forward to.
Due to circumstances that I am not fully privy to, Front Sight experienced a hiatus beginning sometime in ’06, if I recall correctly. It stopped hosting matches for the public although some members still frequently go there to plink.
Adrian, who joined the Department of Justice in ’05, stepped down from the organization after five consecutive terms and got replaced by a friend, fellow shooter Alvin Empinado.
Empinado stepped down after his term expired and was replaced by another friend, Gil Limosnero, who died in a motorcycle accident last December.
Cebu City Jail Warden Efren Nemeño, who I met at Mario Abangan’s place last Saturday, is the new president. And he said the club is holding members-only matches every Sunday of April in preparation to getting the ball rolling again.
I attended the fellowship match last Sunday and came home glad. Happy times for a happy club are here again. (knrama@gmail.com)
