Shooting Stars : Whether It Is On the Set or on the Range, Jim Zubiena and Linda Rose Have Become Accomplished Performers

They look like they should be playing tennis or sunning themselves poolside or taking meetings with producers. Instead, Jim Zubiena and Linda Rose have spent much of their free time over the last nine years at some hot, dusty, desert shooting range mastering their sport--speed shooting.

Shooting at targets for speed is something like playing the video game Galaga, but it’s real. And with exciting new additions to the sport, such as replacing the traditional paper targets with steel ones, its popularity and exposure are growing.

Yet shooting clearly remains a misunderstood sport. “People think it’s a lot of yahoo red-neck types who go out and drink beer and shoot,” said Rose, who, like her husband, is among the top 10 speed shooters in the world.

“Actually, there are doctors and lawyers, and it’s done in a safe manner. In fact, once people see it, see how much fun it is, they change their minds,” she said. “I mean, I don’t hunt. I couldn’t shoot anything. It’s strictly a game.”

The Zubienas left Chicago and came West in 1976 to pursue acting careers. And at just about the time they settled into their new life in North Hollywood, not exactly known as the pistol-shooting hotbed of the world, they became involved in speed shooting.

As members of the Southwest Pistol League, the largest organized shooting group in the United States, Rose and Zubiena grew up with the sport. “It’s about 25 years old, but probably in its 20th generation,” Zubiena said. The sport has gone through myriad changes, and is still evolving.

Speed shooting is the most recent, and the most exciting, outgrowth of practical pistol shooting. Initially designed for self-defense, practical pistol shooting involves three basics: accuracy, speed and power. “With speed shooting, they pitched away the power factor. So you shoot as accurately as you can and as fast as you can. It’s probably the best thing practical pistol shooting ever gave birth to. And that’s the sport that’s taking off like crazy.”

Zubiena was charmed from the moment he tried it in 1976 at Angeles Range in Sand Canyon. “It was instantaneous hook. It’s like playing sandlot baseball for the first 15 years of your life and then being introduced to baseball, the real thing--something that’s specific .”

Zubiena is one of just 21 shooters to hold the Masters title, an honorary ranking above A. Shooters are classified A through E; E being the sport’s fledglings.

Rose, too, was hooked from her first outing, and she credits her success, at least in part, to the coaching she’s received from her husband. She is the only woman ever to make it to the B class.

“That was my goal,” she said. “I remember when I started competing, there weren’t many women. It used to get real quiet when I went out there. But I started to excel. Now they’re saying there’s a place for women.”

Another relative newcomer to speed shooting competitions is the steel-plate target. The sound of steel has added a dimension to shooting: It is now a spectator sport.

“It is the only one (shooting sport) that you can really enjoy watching,” Zubiena said. “With other forms of shooting, you can’t tell beans.”

Thus was born the Steel Challenge, the World Speed Shooting Championships, which is the all-steel, four-day tournament hosted by the Southwest Pistol League. And for shooters like Zubiena and Rose, the Steel Challenge is the most difficult, the most fun and, with over $200,000 in cash and prizes going to the winners, potentially the most profitable of all the tournaments on the professional circuit. It’s all speed and clanging, with the competitors going against the clock, against reactive targets and against themselves in six separate courses, with targets set from four to 40 yards away.

At the fifth-annual Steel Challenge, held last month up in Sand Canyon, Zubiena placed 10th overall, and Rose third in the women’s division (she was the 1983 women’s champion). Women compete with the men, and at the end of the competition, their scores are tallied both with the men’s and separately.

Last weekend, Zubiena competed in the Southwest Pistol League’s monthly league match, but he used a Colt 9mm, which was inappropriate for the courses, in order to prepare for this weekend’s Bianchi Cup. Held in Columbus, Mo., the Bianchi Cup tournament is the biggie of practical pistol shooting.

Because speed shooting is so precision oriented, it requires intense concentration--and an ungodly amount of practice. Zubiena and Rose prepare for a tournament first by learning the course. “You have to choreograph it,” Zubiena said. “When we’re learning the matches, we’ll probably be up there (at Juniper Tree) three or four times a week, shooting about 200 rounds each.”

Both agree that speed shooting is not an easy sport to master. “You practice and practice and practice till you get the technique down,” Zubiena explained. “Then you concentrate on the specifics, just like with any other sport.”

It has been so demanding, in fact, that Rose recently decided to take a break from her shooting to devote time to other pursuits. “I’ve done what I set out to do, and I don’t have much competition,” she said. “I want to do other things.” Like business.

Rose and Zubiena are actors first and shooters second. “I’ve been acting since I was 12,” Zubiena said. “I’m a better actor than I am a shooter.” And although occasionally the two do overlap--his recent guest-starring role as a hit man on NBC’s “Miami Vice” provided him the opportunity to shoot up a limo--for the most part, the couple keeps their shooting and acting worlds separate.

Shooting remains a hobby that has afforded the Zubienas time to spend together, and there are several other husband-and-wife competitive-shooting couples. “They get into it because they want to share things. They want to be together,” Zubiena said. “That’s important to me.”

The Zubienas have always shot together. And they climbed--from “hosers” to masters of the sport--up the competitive-shooting hierarchy together.

So did the pressures. “Some of the fun does go away,” Zubiena said. “But not the excitement. It’s still a rush.”

And now with the added steel dimension and accompanying spectator involvement and big-money prize incentives and emerging media coverage, Rose and Zubiena realize that the truth--the excitement--of their sport is out.

“It’s growing real, real fast,” Zubiena said. “There’s going to come a time when they (the networks) won’t be able to ignore it. There’ll be too many people doing it.”