Once again the National High Point Race has been captured by top competitors. This year’s High Point Champions are both winning for the fi rst time in their mounted shooting careers. As luck would have it, they live just a few miles from one another. John Clark, nationally known mounted shooting champion who has World and National titles to his credit started strong in the spring and traveled hard to capture his first National High Point Title. Early in the year John was just a few hundred points ahead of last year’s High Point Cowboy, Rock Clark and M5 National High Point Marvin Rickman. But as the year progressed John’s well known consistency paid off with a widening gap of nearly 1,500 points by early fall. But with the World Championship being counted at 10x points it was far from settled until the smoke had cleared in Amarillo and John finished with a lead of 1,009 points over Rock Clark who made a strong run all the way to the end.

Whitney Vickers was one of the few contestants who attended all seven of the CMSA Championship Series events in 2008 and also hit most of the largest events in the eastern United States. Events hosted by TnCMSA and Peach State Mounted Shooters in addition to many other state and regional events gave this up and coming young champion the lead early on that held for the entire season. Riding Sakota, a registered AQHA gelding purchased from the Kuka’s, it was a match made in horse heaven. This team captured numerous overall’s and consistently placed in the top at large and small events making her presence known that ‘she came to ride’ at every event. Amanda Porter, Shifarrah Carr and Kenda Lenseigne all got close at different times during the season, but none could put together a run strong enough to catch her final total of 10,494 total points.

2009 should prove to be another landmark year for the points race with the addition of real prizes like the Ford F-150, free entry to the regional men and ladies high point winners and the divisional drawings for free entry to all nine events and large plans for similar incentives in the future. Plus, the addition of events on the east and west coasts for a total of nine CMSA Championship Series events the CMSA Points Race will continue to get tougher to win and be more rewarding to those winners.

Category: News