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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[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

That must be rewarding.
What type of equipment?

[Aragorn243]

When shooting they wear adjustable shooting jackets, leather slings and a padded fingerless glove. Shooting glasses are required unless they wear prescription. We only shoot prone. Most sight themselves in with spotting scopes but it is legal for coaches to do that or have them make corrections. I hate shooting that way. It's painful. I give the kids a lot of credit for doing what they do. No one gets to watch them compete so not a lot of glory unless they beat the arch rival schools. The football team hasn't won in four years so since we win matches, they do at least get some attention and respect.

[CINDERS]

Way to go "A" does not matter how you win or by what margin the fact is your team won.
The hardest thing is to cultivate self belief in young men so often I have seen new aspiring shooters come to our range hoping to get good scores only to find that it ain't that simple, some show an aptitude for shooting others it takes patience as their skill is inside them they just need to get the confidence.
The only demons they face are their own and keeping them on the narrow focused path is an art in its self but great to hear bloke congrats to all.........

[Ovidio]

Great thing. I wish I could organise something like that here, but even shooting air rifles out of ranges can turn legally ugly if some idiot calls the police.
Anyway, I making a lot of PR around shooting.
Yesterday night at my company’s Christmas dinner, three or four guys asked me to take them to the range and make a trial shooting.
One starts small.......

[Aragorn243]

Way to go "A" does not matter how you win or by what margin the fact is your team won.

Actually it sort of does. We lost the championship last season because of a lower match average. We tied at 10-2, we each won one in the head to head, next tiebreaker was match average which we lost by about 6 points over the entire season. My team is about 60% girls also, coed. Of my top 11, seven are girls.

[Ovidio]

Work on, you’ll get there!

[CINDERS]

Girls seem to have a better physc for pressure one thing I have learnt when running from my wife is to zig zag with stops & starts, she is a champion shot in her own right and has beaten some of the top Australian shooters in our club (Queens winners with Intl experience) on the day no mean feat for a shooter of 20 years experience when they have had nearly 40+ years at the game.

[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

What type/brand of air rifles are used?

[Aragorn243]

Walther LG300's