EPHRATA — Gearing up for a competition is all about being in the right mentality, no matter the sport. Ephrata resident and Royal High School band and choir director Erich Mietenkorte draws influence from being a musician — taking away the experience of performing on a stage and translating it to performing in competition shooting. 

“I like to say that being a musician has made me a better shooter and shooting actually sometimes makes me a better musician,” Mietenkorte said. 

Mietenkorte won his 10th U.S. High-Power Silhouette National Championship earlier this month, another accolade for the 36-year-old silhouette shooter. He has also claimed 31 state championships in multiple states and 29 regional championships. 

Back in 2014, Mietenkorte was approached by a friend who competed in a regional pistol competition and asked Mietenkorte if he was interested in joining. Having a father who spent 21 years in the Army, Mietenkorte was quite familiar with firearms.  

“My dad felt that marksmanship and the discipline, and the traits and the life skills that are built up through the responsibility of marksmanship and operating a firearm safely were very important,” Mietenkorte said. 

Raised in Yelm, he, his brother and father would typically go hunting for birds and deer. With obligations to leading the RHS band during hunting season, competition shooting seemed like an interesting avenue for Mietenkorte to pursue. After the pistol competition, Mietenkorte joined the local rifle league where he was introduced to silhouette shooting. 

“That got me hooked because it was so much fun,” Mietenkorte said. “It was really challenging, and I always appreciate a good challenge. From there, I started going to more matches, meeting more people and realizing that people in the silhouette discipline were amazing.” 

The "deceptively simple” nature of silhouette shooting is what drew Mietenkorte to keep competing in the discipline, he said. Silhouette competitions feature metallic cut-outs of a chicken, a pig, a turkey and a ram, where shooters stand up without support and fire upon the targets.  

“I’ve shot other disciplines, and there’s so much equipment that people show up with,” Mietenkorte said. “They have to unload a truck full of stuff sometimes just to compete. The cool thing about silhouette is I can bring my rifle, some ammunition and my shooting vest, and that’s it. We stand, we shoot — it's the simplicity of it.” 

Competition at the National Silhouette Championships began July 28, running through Aug. 3 at the Ridgway Rifle Club in Ridgway, Pa., about 120 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The championship meet was broken up into two sections; small bore competition was held July 28-30, while high-power matches were held Aug. 1-3.  

Mietenkorte won his 10th high-power championship earlier this month and claimed his fourth consecutive Grand Aggregate National Championship in the process. The Ephrata resident also took second in small bore competition. 

“The aggregate winners are the individuals who hit the most targets in each class,” Mietenkorte said. “The person who hits the most targets overall is the winner of the entire championship.” 

He credited the support of family, mentality and sponsors for his success. 

“I wouldn't be able to carve out time to train or travel and go to competitions without their support,” Mietenkorte wrote in a message to the Columbia Basin Herald. “Having my wife Laura and son Miles at matches means the world to me and it makes me so happy to be able to share this with them. In addition to family support, I would say having developed the mental discipline required to train, and more so, work through issues when things aren't going the way they need to.   

Mietenkorte said that a silhouette range is being installed at the Boyd Mordhorst Shooting Range in Ephrata, which the Ephrata Sportsmen’s Association operates. 

“Being able to develop a silhouette range our here at the Ephrata shooting range is going to be an opportunity to not only learn those skills and hone those skills, but also for local people to get together and enjoy a shooting discipline,” he said. 

    Erich Mietenkorte has been participating in competitive shooting for a decade, winning 10 national high-power silhouette championships along with a plethora of state and regional competitions.