High School Rifle Team

[Aragorn243]

A few of you have expressed an interest in the rifle team that I coach at the High School level. Better to have it's own thread rather than being buried in the black powder forum.

My team currently has 29 members. 11 of them are fully ready to compete in our matches. Of these 11, 5 are seniors, 1 is a junior, 3 are sophomores and 2 are freshmen. Only 9 are able to compete in a match so I have decent depth this year. Of those remaining, nearly all are freshmen with a few sophomores mixed in. Of those, 4 will most likely be ready to compete later in the season, and 5 others show definite promise for next season. 4 or 5 will probably never be able to shoot competitively and the rest might if they stick it out for a few years. I have had kids that shot all four years with their senior year being the only year they shot well enough to compete. I've had one that shot four years and was just outside all four. I did make sure he competed in one match his senior year.

Our first match was last night and we won but our scores were miserable. 3-99's and 6-97's. On the positive side, we won and no one shot worse than a 97. On the negative side, no one shot a 100 and we had two 97's in our top five. Both of these can be killers when competing against better teams. We were up against the worst in the league last night. We shot a 491, they shot a 475. Five teams in the league shot better than we did last night which is the problem. Their range was horrendous but my kids should be able to shoot anywhere. It was in a cafeteria with an open active hallway just to the right of my kids shooting positions. Massive distraction. We shoot air rifles so with portable targets they can set up a range anywhere. This is not a good location. The lanes were too narrow, my kids shoot angled, they have everything set up for straight. They also didn't have the targets at the same heights. One up, one down, very distracting again. I was not pleased. They just joined the league this year so they are in a learning curve and as we are happy to have another team, we don't want to make a lot of waves to discourage them. We have 8 teams in our league, 14 matches as we compete home and away with each.

Practice the night before this match, my kids shot a 498 which would have bested everyone on match night. But practice and matches are two different things, apples and oranges. But they prove the potential is there.

Our rifles are Walther LG300's so if your curious, you can check them out. .177 match grade pellets, capable of shooting through the same hole with the rifle in a vise at 10 meters. Not quite olympic grade but close.

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