29 youth marksmen invited to Legion air rifle championships in Michigan

American Legion ^ | July 09, 2025 | Staff

[T Ruth]

The precision and sporter shooters will compete at Hillsdale College July 24-26.

The American Legion’s Junior 3-Position Air Rifle National Championship will again be held on the campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Mich., July 24-26. The top 15 precision and 14 sporter youth marksmen who competed in the American Legion postal match advanced to the championships.

During competition July 24 and 25, participants in both the precision and sporter categories will shoot a .177-caliber air rifle in three positions – prone, standing and kneeling – 20 times for each position twice. The top eight competitors in both categories will advance to the finals on Saturday, July 26, where each shooter will fire 10 shots standing. The winner from each respective category will receive a $5,000 scholarship provided by The American Legion and the Sons of The American Legion. A $1,000 scholarship, provided by the American Legion Auxiliary, will be awarded to the second-place finishers in each category.

The precision and sporter champions will also receive a trip to The American Legion’s 106th National Convention in Tampa, Fla., in August to be honored alongside other American Legion youth program champions.

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TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: americanlegion; banglist; hillsdalecollege; michigan

[T Ruth]

The names of the 29 competitors are at the link.

[waterhill]

Love good pellet/bb gun.

[GaltAdonis]

Do any high schools have have marksmanship shooting programs anymore?
Mine did, but I graduated in 1982.
We used real guns, and nothing bad ever happened.
Nobody flipped-out and became a “school shooter”.

I guess that society has degenerated so fast and so far since then that such a
thing (high school marksman teams) is unthinkable now.

I suppose between the widely prescribed psychoactive medications and
the loss of civility it may be wise, tragically.
We are on the brink of losing our very civilization, it appears.
Maybe not ‘losing’ it, but watching it being transformed to something far less than it was.
Something crude, juvenile and barbaric.

[crusty old prospector]

Good for them.

[gundog]

A local Christian school has skeet shooting.

[GaltAdonis]

Good. That’s a start.

My old high school discontinued anything of the sort, along with the
Naval Junior ROTC program the year after I graduated.
Had to get rid of everything that had anything to do with yucky guns you know…

[Charles Martel]

My high school (1980 graduate) also had a Naval JROTC program. The retired USN instructors' office space doubled as an armory, both for .22 match rifles and for the deactivated Springfields and Garands of the Drill Team. A local Navy Reserve facility with an indoor range allowed us to practice and compete there.

I think the indoor range went away first - the usual EPA lead contamination hand-wringing. Then the .22 rifles went back to DCM and were probably sold through the DCM and later CMP processes.

The school still has a JROTC unit, it still has "ARMORY" painted in military stencil on the Petty Officers' door, but the rifle team shoots airguns now. I'm a bit amazed that they're retained that much.

[Antihero101607]

I guy I work with has a son that shoots shotgun on some team, I’d like to say it’s through his high school. This is somewhere in Jackson county Michigan. So they’re still out there.

[GaltAdonis]

One amazing thing is that guys (and one gal) in the ROTC program that
were on the shooting team were issued a separate additional locker
to keep our guns and shooting stuff in. Right in the hallways with all of the
lockers for regular students. And we could and did carry our rifles on
the school bus. Can you imagine that now?
How times change.

[FlyingEagle]

Careful! You boys can put your eye out with that thing!