Max Michel Wins 7th Straight USPSA Area 6 Open Title

COVINGTON, Ga. — When the final scores were tallied at this year’s U.S. Practical Shooting Association’s (USPSA) Area 6 Handgun Championship, the name Max Michel once again topped the list of Open division shooters giving the Team Sig shooter a record seven straight titles at the match.

Michel initially planned to compete in the Production division where Sig’s duty-style pistols naturally fall, but when the reigning national champion reviewed the course design and what top shooters would be attending, he quickly changed his plans in order to compete in Open.

“With KC Eusebio and Chris Tilley in the match, and more than 100 shooters total, the Area 6 match was beginning to look like a match on a par with the USPSA Nationals,” explained Michel.

“The difficulty of the stages in this match, along with the talent I’d face, gave me my best opportunity to practice my Open division shooting before the Nationals later this year and I wasn’t going to pass that up.”

And excellent practice it was as Michel won seven stages in a row to hold off former Army Marksmanship Unit (AMU) teammate Eusebio for the win.

Michel finished the match with a score of 1191.4037, just over 27 points ahead of second place Eusebio’s 1163.8470. Finishing in third was the 2007 National Open Champion and Team SVI shooter Chris Tilley who finish more than 60 points behind Michel with 1130.0780.

Fourth place went to David Pruitt of Team Red Dot Shooting who won the first stage in the match but fell out of contention with four misses and a final score of 1033.7806. Fifth place went to current AMU team member Shane Coley who posted a 1031.3844.

All of the top five are ranked as Grand Masters in the sport, the highest skill level in Practical Shooting. A total of 12 Grand Masters and 15 Masters competed in the Open division making it the toughest of the match.

Among the women competing in the division, Jessie Abbate, who is on the verge of announcing her new sponsor, topped the field and finished 18th overall in her first Open match with a score of 858.5236. Abbate, who has been a force in the Production and Limited-10 divisions both regionally and nationally, entered the Open division after just two weeks behind the gun.

The title of top Junior went to Nicholas Neel, also a Grand Master, who placed 14th overall with a score of 908.5281. The high Senior title was won by Teddy Llasos with 764.5002, which placed him 37th in the field. The Super Senior title went to Robert Keller, one of the Master level shooters in the match, who finished 22nd overall with a final score of 827.3644.

The Area 6 Handgun Championship was held at the South River Gun Club range in Covington, Ga. and sponsored by Georgia-based firearms maker Glock. The match drew 384 top shooters from around the country as well as Canada, Colombia and Jamaica.