Algonquin man to compete in world shooting contest

An Algonquin man has turned his love of guns into a real spectator sport.

Tim Vinci, 49, will be firing two guns this week in the Steel Challenge World Speed Shooting Championships in Piru, Calif.

The competition, which begins Thursday and ends Saturday, is attracting roughly 125 shooters from around the world, including Vinci and teenager Ashley Bolda of Crystal Lake, officials said.

The sport works like this: competitors draw their weapons at the sound of the buzzer, then shoot five steel plates as fast as they can.

The event, in existence since 1981, lasts eight stages and the guns include everything from .22-caliber pistols to semiautomatic guns. Vinci will be firing his 9 mm and .22-caliber handguns.

"It's a huge, huge rush," Vinci said of the sport. "Just shooting targets kind of gets boring, at least for me. Shooting at reactive steel ... you hear a cause and effect."

The shooters' best four of five runs on seven stages and three of four on one stage, are combined with their overall match time.

The difference between the champion and a runner-up is usually a few hundredths of a second, said Dave Thomas, executive director of the Steel Challenge Shooting Association, the sport's national governing body and the group that's organizing the competition.

The winners from each division will receive cash, firearms and other prizes from 90 sponsors, Thomas said.

Only contestants with a shooting background are allowed to compete, so novices need not apply.

Vinci, a married father of two, grew up in Franklin Park and learned the importance of proper gun handling from his late uncle Mike Palella and his older brother Steve.

Vinci fired his first gun when he was 6 or 7 years old at a range, and by the time he was 11 or 12 he was regularly accompanying his uncle and brother on pheasant and squirrel hunting trips in rural St. Charles.

"I knew at that time this would be a sport I would stay involved with," said Vinci, who comes from a family of hunters and has shot competitively for 10 years.

Besides speed shooting, Vinci competes in other shotgun sports, including trap, skeet and sporting clays.

Vinci said he didn't do well in the world tournament last year and placed in the 170s.

But now that he's in the Los Angeles area on business, he has had several opportunities to practice in Piru.

He has every intention of redeeming himself in 2010.

"I need to do better, but you know what? It's fun to compete and I would love to win but I don't have any preconceived notions of something like that," he said.