First!
Add the name Jacob McInturff to the history books of the Cardinal Center in Marengo, Ohio. The 18-year-old shooter from Johnson City, Tennessee, had not broken 100 straight in skeet in a few years but that didn’t seem to phase him as he took to the brand new skeet fields and ran not just 100, but 200 straight, ensuring his place in the history books as the first shooter to do so here at the facility.
Earlier in the competition Raymond Nagro of Gurnee, Illinois left his own mark as he claimed the honor of being the first shooter to run 100 straight.
McInturff is here with the Unaka Shooters and back home is a regular on the skeet fields at the Unaka Rod & Gun Club where is he frequently outguns his elders. They sometimes resort to a little good humored gamesmanship to get in McInturff’s head, hoping to throw him off his game. Sometimes it works, and sometimes, the young shooter admits, he gives as good as he gets.
When it comes to head-to-head competition club members might not be pulling for McInturff to win, but when it comes to representing the club in the Scholastic Clay Target Program (SCTP), there is no mistaking their support.
“They’ve been very good to the team,” says Mark McInturff who is both Jacob’s father and the team’s coach.
When the senior McInturff talks about the Unaka Rod & Gun Club it’s clear how much he and the team appreciate the support they get. It’s support he hopes to repay with future leaders. McInturff sees SCTP not simply as a youth shooting program but also as a training ground to develop and prepare young men and women to someday take over the management of their home shooting clubs, and eventually return to the SCTP Nationals with new shooters and new teams.
This long term view probably explains why the current Unaka Rod & Gun Club president jokingly refers to Jacob as the ‘future club president.’
For now though, he’s just the guy sitting atop the leader board with the only perfect 200 score in skeet…and he’s OK with it staying that way through the rest of the championship.