Lisa Munson - Practical Perfectionist By Heidi Thomas "I am a perfectionist. When I focus on something, I have to give 110%." That is Lisa Munson's motto and the reason she is the U.S. Practical Shooting Association's three-time Limited National Women's Champion. In 1997, she stood 5'1 and weighed 98 pounds. Every shot rocked her back on her heels, but it didn't stop her from winning her first national championship. "It was like shooting a jackhammer," she quips. But size doesn't have to be a limitation, she explains. "I just push harder. I have confidence in myself, because I know what my abilities are." The Marysville, WA, shooter's second win came in 2000, a special achievement to her because, "it was a confirmation" of her skills, that it wasn't just a fluke she had won before. And when she successfully defended her title in 2001, her next goal was to achieve Master Class, which she accomplished shortly afterwards. And this year she is also participating on the USPSA's Women's Gold Team at the World Shoot in Africa. Lisa got her first taste of shooting when she was eight-years-old. Her family would spend summer weekends at a cabin in the Cascade Mountains. To overcome boredom, her dad showed her how to shoot a Benjamin Sheridan pump .22 pellet gun and gave her a couple of boxes of pellets and a supply of empty soda cans. "I remember it took four pumps for a target load and eight for a rabbit load," she recalls. "It was all I could do to get four pumps to get each shot. I did it over and over again. It became a quest-I was driven," she laughs. "It taught me trigger control and not to waste my shots." She soon became proficient at hitting her target, the "O" on the Coke cans. That hobby fell by the wayside for a few years. But then one day in high school, as she was waiting for her turn in driver's education, a fellow student showed her a certificate he'd won shooting small-bore rifle. Lisa was intrigued, and he invited her to go to the range. That was her "first date" with Eric Munson, who was later to become her husband. It was a junior NRA program, and "you could win cool emblems," Lisa says. Again, her "quest to be the best" overcame her and she would win two or three emblems a night. Her new friend had been the top shooter before she came along, and now she was becoming a threat. "It's a wonder we didn't break up right then," she laughs. But she decided the relationship was too important to her, so she "backed off," allowing Eric to remain the only Distinguished Expert in the club. They became engaged, but when their families started planning a big wedding, they eloped to Idaho. "I drove," Lisa adds with a twinkle in her eye. They later moved from Everett to Marysville, where they discovered the local range, and became involved in a winter league, shooting .22 pistols and rifles. "I came in second, and Joe (DeSimone, president of the Marysville Rifle Club) invited us to try action shooting. My Valentine's Day present that year was a Springfield Armory .45," Lisa remembers. "Our romance revolved around guns from day one." Eric tried the new gun first, and the six-footer "jumped a mile," she chuckles. Lisa was hooked. She learned how to load ammo and tune her own gun. Two years later, in 1989, she won her first women's championship at the Area One match in Utah. "That was one of the most meaningful wins I've ever had. I told the (Marysville) club members that I was going to win C-Class and Hi Lady," Lisa says. "They laughed." She and Eric took their kids, ages 3 and 6, on a road trip to the match. "I was so green I didn't even understand the scoring system, so I didn't look at the scores all through the match. I was oblivious to everything. I just went from one stage to the next and tried to shoot as cleanly as I could. I figured I was doing OK, but probably not great." All the women at the match were shooting minor loads, she relates, "And here I was, 95 pounds, shooting major. I just didn't want to lose any points." Lisa shot a percentage just below a Master Class score, did win C-Class and High Lady, and earned a slot to the Nationals. At the national match, she was placed in the women's "Super Squad," and was awed to shoot with then-Women's World Champion, Canadian Kerry Lathwell. Lisa placed 9th among women. With her success, she was offered sponsorship by Ernie Hill, and then Caspian. Lisa Munson was on her way to a shooting career. Over the years she has won "hundreds" of trophies, most of which she keeps packed in boxes. "I only have so much wall space," she says. Some, from the "early days", she displays in her reloading room, because there are special memories attached to those particular matches. Although IPSC shooting didn't become Eric's passion-he's more into trapshooting for relaxation from his stressful job as a hardware engineer for Hewlett-Packard-he is Lisa's biggest supporter. He doesn't mind that she became a better pistol shot than he, or that she travels many weeks out of the year. "I thrive on travel. He doesn't," she explains. Lisa shoots about 15,000 rounds a year (it used to be 20,000). "I don't practice as much as I probably should, but I don't want to burn out. I want to be inspired and not lose the love of it." She generally takes two to three months off during the winter and by the time the trees start to bud, she is ready to shoot again. "Then it's my heart's desire." She took several months off in 2001 to help produce the Area One Match at her home range, and yet that hiatus didn't stop her from winning her third national championship. In Limited competition, Lisa shoots an SV .40. (Limited is using uncompensated pistols and iron sights.) Her holster is a Bianci Hemisphere and she uses Montana Gold Bullets. SV and Montana Gold are her sponsors. Although she is Limited Ladies Champion, Lisa also shoots in open competition. (Open allows optical sights and gas compensators which help keep the muzzle from rising during recoil.) There, she shoots an SV .38 Super with hybrid porting. "You'd think, with my size, that open would be better for me," she says. But, she explains, every gun she shoots bounces, or kicks, because of her diminutive size, so she has worked to overcome that. Others are accustomed to their open guns that don't bounce and thus are handicapped when they switch to limited. "Open can spoil you as a shooter. You can shoot fast because of the dot (laser scope). But for some reason I've struggled with it more than limited." She came in fifth at the Open Nationals last year, because of a gun malfunction. At age 41, Lisa has achieved a more stable physical foundation, working out with weights, running wind sprints for stamina, and putting on about 15 pounds, so "the gun doesn't rock me as much any more." She knows she is physically prepared so she can go into a match with a positive mind set. Shooting "saved my sanity" at a time when she quit her job in aerospace circuitry, where she was already a supervisor at age 19, to raise her kids. "I don't think I could've been just a stay-at-home mom in that 'Superwoman era'. I had to feel that I was excelling at something extra, just for me." Competition has been an "alter-ego" for Lisa, but she says she strives for a balance between that and her family. That is what she is most proud of. Teamwork has always been a theme with her and Eric in raising their children, Shawna, now 20, and Matt, now 17. "We each have our own expertise," Lisa relates. "The kids know 'this is Dad's specialty' or 'that's Mom's' and it has worked really well." Despite being the shortest one in her family-with Eric at 6'1, Shawna, 5'10 and Matt, 5'9-"people do seem to defer to me fairly often," Lisa admits. She enjoys dirt biking with her son and playing tennis with her daughter. "I have two marvelous kids who've never given me an ounce of grief. Every moment with them has been a gift." Lisa is not just a jock, though. She became interested in personal investing about 20 years ago, a time when not many women were involved in that field. Teaching herself by watching the markets and "just using common sense," Lisa now reads tax publications "for the fun of it." She credits her aunt, who raised her and ran her own business, with instilling that instinct in her. "I guess I've always been a little ahead of my time in my thinking. I didn't know that wasn't what everybody else was doing," she says. In addition to being a perfectionist, Lisa credits her diverse accomplishments to her ability to be a risk taker. "I encourage my kids to jump into something with both feet, but do it responsibly." And if Lisa Munson hadn't become a championship IPSC shooter, she says she would've loved to be a race car driver." "If you don't take risks, you're not living life," she says simply.