TargetTalk

I did not get to go to Perry myself for the Open, but my club sent a few shooters. Looking at the results, I see that the Jr ROTC teams really ruled the Sporter match. I have some kids that have shot for 4 years now and aren't anywhere near those ROTC shooters. What's the ROTC secret? Do they meet & shoot 5 days a week?

My sons' JROTC teams shoot a 3x10 or 3x20 about three or four times a week.
They are probably one of the top ten Navy ROTC teams with a field of almost 3000 shooters.
Some of the members on the top all-service teams that I've talked to shoot two or three times per day, six days a week.

And I just looked at the Camp Perry Open scores.
Actually, they are not that great for the podium teams.
The Zion Benton and Freeport scores were unusually low: They are the best teams in the nation.
For instance, Emma Thompson holds the national CMP record with a 578 and rarely shoots less than a 560.
Her whole team holds the CMP Navy JROTC team record of 2226, which is a like 556 per team member.

The sporter teams your refering to and the second place precision team are all from the great state of illinois. We have the richest farmland in the world. Because of the supernutrients in the soil our shooters see better and are less twitchy than the rest of you!! With this base we dont need good equipment, dont need good coaching, dont need dedicated shooters nor dedicated families. We dont even need to train!! Its easy in ilinois.

My old AR coach told me . . .
- Practice 2x a week to maintain skills.
- Practice 4x a week to improve.

Which explains why I was always such a BAD golfer. I never got enough practice, at once a month.

gspell68 wrote:My sons' JROTC teams shoot a 3x10 or 3x20 about three or four times a week.
They are probably one of the top ten Navy ROTC teams with a field of almost 3000 shooters.
Some of the members on the top all-service teams that I've talked to shoot two or three times per day, six days a week.

Just what I was afraid of! :)
Congrats to those shooters.
This is going to be tough for me to equal. My team only meets 1x per week.

GaryN wrote:My old AR coach told me . . .
- Practice 2x a week to maintain skills.
- Practice 4x a week to improve.

I tell them to give me at least 1 hour a day, 5 days a week. I take a survey every meeting. Never get more than a half-hearted-kinda-practiced-maybe-sorta.

Any motivational ideas?

Trigger time is important ... but un-directed trigger time will only get a shooter so far.
Sending them out into the range to just pull the trigger gets them bored pretty quickly.

They need a coach out on the range putting some direction into the time applied.
The "coach" needs more than their own experience out on a rifle range.
Shooting a CH2009 is totally different than an M4, both physically & mentally.

In JROTC and 4-H programs, the "coach" training hardly ever goes beyond the safety aspects of the sport.

For instructors & project leaders: If you do not have not taken at least a Level-1 (NRA-CMP-USAS) you really cannot expect your shooters to do anything more than have fun ... which is OK ... if they are so bored they quit, that is bad.
We really want the "sport for life" approach, and that should be our minimum goal.
The "tossing the mud against the wall" approach does not produce consistent results in this sport.

Use the techniques you learn in the L-1 & beyond training for the coach .... L-2, L-3, USAS Coach Academy .... if you want to see results in the range of those described above. I think there needs to be some "passion" in the coach seat as well.

There are tools out there like the SCATT that can do almost magical things for a shooter, but the coach has to be just as involved as the shooter to use that tool to it's maximum benefit.
Podium Pellets sponsored some clinics at Winter Airgun I hope they repeat all over the country at major matches. Mini-talks by Troy Bassham (mental), Katie Emmons(technique), and Rick Marsh(SCATT) were WAAAAAYYYYY under attended. Rick's techniques with SCATT are some of the best ever. If you miss one of these talks, you have really missed out.

Barry wrote:

GaryN wrote:My old AR coach told me . . .
- Practice 2x a week to maintain skills.
- Practice 4x a week to improve.

I tell them to give me at least 1 hour a day, 5 days a week. I take a survey every meeting. Never get more than a half-hearted-kinda-practiced-maybe-sorta.

Any motivational ideas?

Competition between each other.
Prize can be as simple as a ribbon, or a hamburger lunch. And their picture on the wall.
The idea is to give them a reason to practice.

BTW if you have a girl that shoots WELL, that will push the guys, so they won't be out-shot by a girl. The male ego at work.
And if a freshman or sophmore is out-shooting a junior or senior, that is incentive for the older guys to practice. Again ego at work.

BTW, I have this problem getting the yearbook students to improve their photography skills. It seems that homework is much harder and takes much much longer than it did when I was in high school. The pressure of doing well for college entrance selection.