JROTC Rifle Team Competes at Junior Air National Rifle Match in Ohio
Walla Walla High School’s JROTC Precision and Sporter Class Rifle Teams traveled to Camp Perry, Ohio at the end of January to compete in the Junior Air Rifle National Championships. The match, hosted by The X Count and sanctioned by the Civilian Marksmanship Program, is the culminating event of a selection process that began for WaHi shooters in November when they hosted the regional qualifier on their home range. During the selection process, teams competed in local and regional rifle matches that determined their national ranking. As the program concluded, the top 20 ranked teams in the US were invited to the national title contest.
“We have never qualified both of our rifle teams for this match,” said WaHi Rifle Coach Mark Mebes. “We shoot this qualifier very early in our season, and we generally have very little training under our belts at that point.”
After preliminary local matches were held in 20 different locations across the country, WaHi’s teams qualified for invitations to the national championships with the Sporter team ranked 6th out of 67 teams and the precision team ranked 15th out of 51 teams.
The Sporter team, consisting of Cadet Major Claire Wooster, Cadet Captain Saphira Rynaski, Cadet First Sergeant Melissa Villegas, Cadet Corporal Jaycee Cox, and Cadet Staff Sergeant Wyatt Postlewait, arrived in Ohio with a determination to raise their national ranking.
Targets are shot from the prone, standing, and kneeling positions, with each position taking a little over 30 minutes, and matches generally last a little over 2 hours. Time is allotted for rebuilding parts of the rifle between positions and shots are allowed in each position for sighting in. Shooters shot 20 scored shots in each position, each shot worth 10 points. Each day a shooter fired a course equaling 600 possible points.
On the first day of the match, Cox claimed WaHi’s highest score with a 523, followed by Wooster just a single point behind with a 522, Postlewait at 515, and Villegas and Rynaski at 511 and 508 respectively. The team finished the day on a total of 2064, putting them in 4th place among the teams at the match. Precision class teams competed in a different course of fire, with competitors shooting only from the standing unsupported position for 60 record shots. Precision targets were scored by decimal points, with the highest possible score on each shot being 10.9.
WaHi’s qualifying precision team consisted of Cadet Lieutenant Colonel Hannah Goin, Cadet Captain Sarah Nelson, Cadet Lieutenant Claire Calvert, Cadet Lieutenant Noah Kaheaku, and Cadet Lieutenant Sofie Edwards. Nelson produced the highest score of the day at 604.7, followed by Goin at 588.3, Calvert at 587.7, Kaheaku at 579.8, and Edwards at 570.7. The Blue Devils finished the day on a 2360.5, putting them in 15th place at the halfway point in the match.
On the second day, the Sporter team was led by its newest member, Postlewait. The sophomore completed the course of fire with the highest Blue Devil score of the championship at 535, matching his personal career record. He was followed closely by Cox at 531, Wooster at 530, Rynaski at 526, and Villegas at 516. The team ended the day with 2103, marking only the 3rd time in WaHi history that a sporter team has broken 2100 in a sanctioned match. Their score closed the gap on the 3rd place team, Middletown Rifle Team but the Blue Devils finished 8 points shy of the bronze trophy.
In the precision class, the team was led this time by Calvert who produced a 593.1, finishing just one-tenth of a point behind Nelson at 593 even. Goin shot a 586.8, followed by Kaheaku who improved to a 582.2, and Edwards earned a 572.3. The team finished the championship with a 2354.9 for the day bringing their two-day total to 4715.6 and moving up two places in the final rankings to 13th place nationally.
WaHi’s rifle teams returned home for only one day of training before both teams left for Utah to compete in the Army JROTC National Championship during the first week of February.
