Although BaylorRose Mason has only been shooting Steel Challenge for less than three years, she has reached some impressive heights. Classified as a Grand Master in Rimfire Rifle Iron, Rimfire Rifle Open, PCC Open and PCC Iron (and on the SCSA Top 20 List in that division), she also found the time to reach Master Class in Rimfire Pistol Open and B Class in Rimfire Pistol Iron. Those are surprising achievements in such a brief period.
More surprising is that BaylorRose has only been shooting any type of gun for about three years. Even more surprising is that she’s only 14 years old.
I first encountered BaylorRose at a Steel Challenge match at the Flagler Gun and Archery Club in northeastern Florida in November 2024. I was shooting on a different squad but one of the club members who knew I wrote for the NRA came over and told me, “You’ve got to come and see this young girl shoot. She’s incredible.” I managed to break away long enough to watch her run the Roundabout stage in 6.71 seconds with her rimfire iron rifle. When the scores came out, I was surprised that she didn’t win High Overall with the RFRI. She was second overall with that gun. But she was High Overall with her PCCI, which I didn’t see her shoot. I was intrigued and looked up her SCSA classification records. I was surprised that 6.71-second Roundabout stage wasn’t her personal best. Her best was actually 6.32. That’s an average of 1.58 seconds per five-shot string with five hits. At my age I can’t even blink that fast.
I was impressed, and when I saw her name signed up again for a Flagler match on a frigid January day, I decided to talk to this extraordinary young shooter. After the match I sat down with BaylorRose, her mother Corky Mason and coach Bob Byrnes.
Her path to competitive shooting is an interesting story.
Born in Kuwait City, Kuwait, to a deployed U.S. Army family her early years were spent almost entirely overseas in Kuwait, Australia, Iraq, Japan, Egypt and South Korea. A spring trip home to South Carolina in 2020 “accidentally” started her competitive career.
“What really got her into shooting,” her mother Corky explained, “was her older sister JaneBatson. She was shooting air rifle at the local Scholastic Action Shooting Program and BaylorRose was only 11 years old so I had to take her when I took her sister to practice. She really dragged her feet and was bored to death. I tried to get her interested in air rifle but she didn’t like that. Then a guy on the youth team let her shoot a .22 rifle and she enjoyed that.”
“I really hated guns.” BaylorRose said. “I thought they were noisy. But when the guy let me shoot the .22 rifle, I really liked that and told Mom I’d come to the practice if she let me do that.”
After only brief practice time BaylorRose was off to the 2020 South Carolina Scholastic Action Shooting Program State Championship. Shooting in the Rookie division, she won High Lady in RFRI and RFRO. That was followed by the 2020 SASP National Championship, where she won first in RFRI and third in RFRO Ladies Rookie division.
“Here she was, this little 11-year-old kid, who had to struggle to hold the guns up, and she was winning,” Corky said with a laugh.
The elation was short-lived as the Mason’s next military posting took them to South Korea.
“South Korea was a difficult time for me,” BaylorRose said. “I was really into shooting. But in Korea you had to be 18 to shoot any gun, even an airsoft. I would take a Nerf gun, which isn’t coincidental to anything, and just practice dry firing at Steel Challenge posters on the wall of my room. Every time we could get even a brief period back in the states I ran for my guns.”
Her international odyssey ended in January 2024, when the Mason family returned to their South Carolina home for good. That started another travel marathon.
“She wanted to shoot every match she could,” Corky said. “She would be asking what match are we going to this week? That’s why we got into traveling so much, but it is a great way for her and her sister to see the country that they hadn’t seen growing up. That much travel would normally interfere with schooling, but BaylorRose is homeschooled and she keeps up with her studies on the road. We call it ‘road schooling.’”
That was also when Bob Byrnes, a Steel Challenge Grand Master in Rimfire Rifle Iron, Rimfire Rifle Optic and PCC Open entered the picture as her new coach.
“I met the Masons at Steel Challenge matches where I had been coaching my son Alex, who was a nationally ranked shooter,” Byrnes said. “BaylorRose was coached by one of the match directors, but he felt she could benefit from additional coaching. There are some things you can’t coach. There must be natural ability and the desire to be great. BaylorRose has those and she’s a good listener.”
BaylorRose’s rimfire rifles are built on Ruger 10/22 actions with Volquartsen bolts, receivers and triggers, with Widland barrels and chassis. Her PCCs are the JP-5. Sponsored by Precision Defense, her rimfire pistols are their 2011-pattern rimfire race guns with a quick detachable optic (SIG Romeo3 Max on the handgun and Holosun 507C on the long guns).
A whirlwind 2024 tour resulted in winning High Lady Overall in RFRO, RFRI and PCC at both the Georgia SASP State Championship and South Carolina state match. Moving on to the SASP National Championship she topped five division leaderboards. At the 2024 SCSA Ruger World Speed Shooting Championship she won High Lady in PCCI and was ninth overall in that division, along with third place on the RFRI Lady leaderboard.
The year also highlighted something rather unusual. BaylorRose seems to have a natural affinity for iron sights.
“On the SASP teams they start all the shooters with optics,” she said. “But I really didn’t like optics that much. They felt odd. I wanted to see if there was another gun I could shoot and one of the coaches let me shoot iron sights. I really liked those. They felt more comfortable. I do shoot optics now, but even when I practice, I always seem to do better with the iron sights. They just feel more natural to me.”
That certainly shows in her current classification percentages.
The SCSA classification system is based upon a Peak Time for each of the eight stages. Those Peak Times are derived from the fastest stage times posted at SCSA World and National Championships and vary by gun division. Those eight times are combined into a single time for each division and the shooter’s personal best times in that division are then added up and divided into the Peak Time for a percentage figure.
To become a Grand Master, a shooter must reach 95% or higher of the Peak Times. In PCCO, her current percentage is 97.52. RFRO is 99.34%. PCCI and RFRI are listed as 100%, but that’s a bit deceptive. Simple math reveals that her personal best times are 108.4% of Peak for PCCI and 109.4% of Peak for RFRI. These are her current times, but she seems to have a penchant for setting a new personal best every few matches, so who knows where these will be by the time you read this.
That’s not reflected in her handgun scores, as RFPI is currently at 74.92 (B Class but realistically only one personal best away from A Class) and RFPO at 86.13.
“The handgun scores are pretty much by design,” Byrnes said. “We put handguns on the back burner as a choice between becoming great with a few guns or merely good with a bunch. She hasn’t shot them that much.”
That’s likely to change in the coming years, as she has recently begun shooting air pistol and sport pistol at her local SASP matches. Additionally, Carry Optics may also be on the list in the future.
“I’ve done a couple of different shooting sports,” BaylorRose said. “SASP is fun and challenging. But when I started shooting Steel Challenge, I knew right away that this is what I wanted to do. When I went to the 2024 World Championship, I was very nervous. I just wanted to do well. After that match I thought that if I put in the work, I could win High Lady overall. I have to put it the work. After that, I want High Overall. I’m going to be working on that.”
Given her amazing progress in such a brief period of time, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for BaylorRose Mason.
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