The Forest City Gun Club Juniors are no strangers to the Scholastic Clay Target National Championships. The team won a third straight national title on July 15-16 at Cardinal Shooting Center in Marengo, Ohio, becoming the first team in SCTC history to win three consecutive national championships. But the three-peat as a squad wasn’t the only title FCGC brought back to Savannah.
Rich Pazderski won the High Overall (HOA) Individual National Championship, besting 1,600 other shooters with a total tally of 587 birds (out of a possible 600). The HOA category is a combination of the three primary events: sporting clays, skeet and trap.
He also won the varsity individual National Championship in the sporting clays portion but still, he was not expecting to win the HOA. It was the first individual HOA National Championship ever won by a FCGC Junior shooter.
“This is by far the biggest accomplishment of my life,” said Pazderski. “I honestly didn’t think it was possible. It was an unbelievable feeling that I’ll never forget.”
His mother was in Ohio with Rich and his sister (Abi), but because she was watching her daughter at the time, Rich was able to be the first one to tell his mother about his historic HOA National Championship.
“It was awesome, just really cool to be able to tell her that myself,” he said in a July 25 phone call with PSR. “There were a lot of tears. I couldn’t have done any of this without her help and my dad and my grandparents. This is an expensive sport and my family is No. 1 on the list of people who have helped me and supported me.”
The 18-year-old Pazderski scored a 197 (98-99) in clays, which was five birds better than second place. A 196 in skeet and a 194 in trap gave him a 587 total, four birds better than the second-place finisher. Led by Pazderski's 197, six of the top-25 shooters in sporting clays were Forest City Gun Club Juniors.
A Pinewood Christian Academy graduate and a native of Glennville, Pazderski is committed to shoot for Georgia Southern University in Statesboro beginning this fall. The pair of individual national championships for Pazderski in Ohio came on the heels of his helping lead Pinewood Christian to a Georgia Independent School Association (GISA) state championship in 2022. Pinewood won the “interscholastic” state title while Benedictine won the GHSA state championship.
“I think the amount of winning with (FCGC Juniors) has been insane really,” said Pazderski. “We’ve almost normalized it. I think it’s a result of us having the best coaches in the country but I know that we expect to win it every year so that’s the mindset.”
Abi Pazderski, 16, scored a 99-98 (197) in the varsity skeet competition on the ladies side of things, tying in second with another FCGCJ team member, Anna 
Loren Dekle. Dekle won the reverse run tiebreaker to claim second place, but the female duo’s pair of 197s were the best skeet scores of any Forest City Gun Club Junior skeet shooters, including boys.
“(Abi) is definitely one of the best female shooters in the country,” he said of his younger sister.
“Hopefully she’ll be joining me at Georgia Southern in a few more years.”
For more information on the Forest City Gun Club or to find out more about the Juniors team, visit www.forestcitygunclub.com.
FOLLOW Travis Jaudon on Twitter/Instagram @JaudonSports. Email him at travisLjaudon@gmail.com.
Photo Credit - Forest City Gun Club Juniors Facebook
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