JROTC Air Rifle Championships

[CMP]

By Gary Anderson
Director, Civilian Marksmanship Program

FORT BENNING, Ga. - More than 140 JROTC cadets representing 62 JROTC units in 25 states and one Department of Defense high school in Germany qualified for the 2008 National JROTC Air Rifle Championship
that will take place at the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit's Pool
International Shooting Complex March 27 to 29.
This year's qualifiers include, for the first time, Air Force cadets.
The JROTC Nationals now take place in early spring and culminate the shooting seasons for Army, Marine Corps, Navy and now Air Force JROTC cadets.
An estimated 100,000 cadets in 1,700 JROTC units nationwide participate in the instructional phase of the JROTC program that typically begins in the fall of each year. The competition phase of the program begins in November and December when JROTC units with rifle teams fire in JROTC Postals. This year, 5,978 cadets and 1,101 unit teams participated in the four service's postal competitions. This was the largest participation ever in these competitions.
The JROTC Nationals offer both team and individual events in both sporter and precision classes. This year's sporter qualifiers include four Army, Marine Corps and Navy teams and two teams from the new Air Force program. The Air Force has not yet ventured into precision class competition, but four unit teams each from the Army, Marine Corps and Navy JROTC programs will compete for precision class honors.
At-large individual qualifiers are cadets who had high individual scores in the Region Championships, but whose teams did not qualify for the Nationals. 22 at-large qualifiers, six each from the Army, Marine Corps and Navy and four from the Air Force, will compete in sporter class. 18 at-large qualifiers will contend for individual titles in the precision class. The individual sporter and precision class championships at the JROTC Nationals will include all team members plus the at-large individuals.
King George High School NJROTC from King George, Va., was the top sporter qualifier with a score of 2170. King George won the 2007 JROTC National Sporter Class team championship with an average of 2,164 points over two days of firing. The second highest sporter team qualifier was Ozark High School AJROTC from Ozark, Mo., with a 2,158.
The Ozark team set the current sporter team national record at the Montgomery Bell Classic last October where they fired 2,197.
Other teams that can be expected to challenge for the national title include R. L. Paschal High School AJROTC from Fort Worth, Texas, that qualified at 2,140; Reed High School NJROTC from Sparks, Nev., that qualified at 2,130 and Tuba City High School MCJROTC from Tuba City, Ariz., that qualified at 2,123.
The top precision class team qualifier was another Navy team, Union Grove High School NJROTC from McDonough, Ga. Union Grove fired a
2,314 in the Eastern Region Championship. Other top precision qualifiers were East Coweta High School MCJROTC, Sharpsburg, Ga., 2,304; La Cueva High School MCJROTC, Albuquerque, N.M., 2,291; Del Valle High School AJROTC, El Paso, Texas, 2,285; Henry County High School NJROTC, McDonough, Ga., also 2,185 and Manzano High School MCJROTC, Albuquerque.
Henry County won the 2007 JROTC Nationals precision team competition. With qualifying scores that close, any one of the top six or eight precision team qualifiers could win the national title.
At Pool Range, competitors will fire individual and team air rifle matches in three positions - standing, kneeling and prone - March
28 and 29. All team firing is scheduled to finish at 3 p.m. March 29.
To determine the National JROTC individual championships, there will be an individual final on each day of competition. The top eight individuals in each rifle class on March 28 will fire a sporter final that starts at 4:30 p.m. and a precision final that will start after the sporter final at about 5:15 p.m. The top eight individual competitors in each class March 29 will fire a second final with the precision final starting at 3:30 p.m. and the sporter final at 4:15 p.m.
Anyone can view these finals on-line as they are fired shot-by-shot by logging onto the results page at
http://clubs.odcmp.com/cgi-bin/report_m ... tchID=2819 and then opening the page for the Individual Sporter or Precision Class Final. Final round competitions can be especially interesting when the scores are close and individual places change after each shot. Final team results will also be posted at this website.
The CMP is providing $11,000 in cash awards to the winning teams. The overall winning precision and sporter teams receive $2,000 each. The top sporter and precision teams representing each service will receive $1,000 each.
The top individual sporter class scores in the Eastern and Western Region Championships were a 648.4 aggregate fired by Nicole Heitmeyer of King George High School in the East and a 645.0 total by Marco Aguyo from Pharr-San Juan-Alamo High School in San Juan, Texas, in the West. The best precision class Region scores were a 685.2 total fired by Kelly Audet of Burke High School of Omaha, Neb., in the West and a 684.8 final score by East Coweta High School's Courtney Duncan in the East.
The complete list of qualifiers and other championship information is posted at http://www.odcmp.com/3P/jrotcinvites.htm.
(Formed in 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to raise the standards of marksmanship throughout the U.S. Army, the Army Marksmanship Unit is assigned to the Accessions Support Brigade of the U.S. Army Accessions Command. The Marksmanship Unit trains its Soldiers to win competitions and enhances combat readiness through train-the-trainer clinics, research and development. For more information on the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit, contact the Public Affairs Office at (706) 545-5436, Paula.Randall@usaac.army.mil or www.USAMU.com. The Civilian Marksmanship Program is a federally-chartered, non-profit corporation dedicated to firearm safety and marksmanship training and to the promotion of marksmanship competition for citizens of the United States. For more information on the CMP, call (419) 635-2141 or dcm@odcmp.com.)