This past week Scopos reached a milestone and manufactured our 2000th Athena Target. An important milestone in our commitment to modernize the sport.
In my career I have talked to thousands of people who shared with me their desire to make shooting more appealing and to let it grow. I am proud to say we have certainly made progress.
Fourteen years ago Scopos (then Shooter’s Technology) launched the Orion Scoring System. A revolution for the sport; Orion digitally scored paper targets, and managed your matches over a diverse set of rulebooks, targets, and courses of fire.
More recently Scopos announced Athena, the world's first affordable Electronic Scoring Target for 10m air guns and 50ft rifle, with the first production units getting shipped about two years ago. Since then, 250 American clubs have modernized their ranges with Athena.
As we look towards the future of the sport and what it will take to modernize it ESTs play an outsized role. ESTs and live scoring simply offer too many advantages to athletes, coaches, and spectators.
Not to mention, shooting on ESTs is just fun!
But creating an affordable EST is not enough. A full featured EST system has to be accurate, transparent, and simple to reach mass adoption.
Without accuracy nothing else matters. When we designed Athena we were willing to make a lot of engineering decisions to keep the price affordable. Never once did we sacrifice accuracy in achieving that goal.
Transparency is equally important. Here in the USA we have a saying, “trust but verify.” With Athena not only can you trust the accuracy, but you can see with your own eyes exactly how Athena scored each shot.
Finally, simplicity is the unspoken holy grail of EST design. The interface needs to be intuitive and predictable. Which is why we not only hire good engineers, we hire engineers who are athletes themselves, who already know the implicit requirements of the sport.
Transforming shooting into a spectator sport requires a lot more work. Athena is playing a big role in that growth, by giving the advantages of ESTs to local and regional clubs. 2000 Athena targets is just the start. Many more ESTs are on their way.
