Well, I wasn’t planning on posting anything tonight but Frankie got her film back from last weekend’s rifle match and she just handed me the photo CDs so…….

For those of you who don't know, our daughter, Laura, and her 2 best friends, Amber and Chelsea, are US Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) cadets and champion three position air rifle shooters. These are not the BB guns most of us knew as kids but precision instruments, reflected by the $3,500 per rifle price tag. I have a vault full of firearms and only one of those, a civilian model of a precision military rifle, cost anywhere near that much.

This past weekend the girls and their team competed in a tournament in Nashville and my wife, Frankie, went along as chaperone. The final results from the match were posted today. The team placed 4th overall out of the 60 teams competing. Some of the competition was precision teams from military schools where 2 hours of practice, 6 days a week is part of the curriculum so our cadets feel they really accomplished something, giving those teams a run for their money. Our Amber, one of Laura's best friends who "adopted" us as her second parents, placed 6th individually out of a field of 247 shooters. Laura placed 15th and Chelsea, our other "adopted" daughter placed 33rd.

Our team (in black) on the firing line in the kneeling position. Laura is the blonde on the left shooting target 26, Amber is on her right shooting 27 and Chelsea is further down shooting target 29. The eighth member of the team is out of frame on the right. 

Laura (left) and Amber take aim in the kneeling position and in the standing position. The black dots on the target sheets are individual bull’s eyes and are about the size of a US quarter. The targets are shot from 7 meters. Note the blue rifle rests next to each shooter. While these rests may not be used when making a shot they are necessary because of the considerable weight of the precision rifles they compete with. Laura’s rifle weighs about 2.5 lbs, more than my .30-06 deer rifle.

The team has another match this weekend in Bedford, Virginia, 2 in Tennessee the following weekend and another in North Carolina the week after that before the mid season break. Competition resumes in January in preparation for the Army National Championships in February at Camp Perry, Ohio. Following that, in March, is the All Service Nationals at Fort Benning, Georgia.

The girls, all honor students and the top three officers in their cadet battalion, are seniors and will graduate in May but that will be not the end of their career with this team. All three have qualified for the Junior Olympics next summer! To say we're proud of them would be the understatement of a lifetime!