Posted on 04/28/2004 10:11:00 AM PDT by the_devils_advocate_666
KINGWOOD -- Two rifles broke. Two targets fell down, during the match, but it wasn't enough to spoil the Preston High JROTC Rifle Team's concentration.
The team won a third-straight West Virginia Junior Olympics Three-Position Air Rifle championship last weekend in Buckhannon, bringing home gold and bronze medals from the competition.
Another area team, the Mason-Dixon Rifle Club Juniors, comprised of teens from Preston and Monongalia counties, won a silver medal in the precision shooting competition at the meet.
The school's A Team of Rustin Ault, Warren Bittinger, Tim Gordon and Mike Witt captured the gold medal. The B Team made up of Kathlene Bolyard, Steve Moats, Cody Shirley and Uriah Sypolt won the bronze.
The Mason-Dixon Club's team includes Ault, Travis Bonner, Jessica Deal and Sypolt.
PHS's Bittinger placed second in individual standings among about 60 shooters. Other individual standings included Gordon, fourth; Witt, fifth; Ault, seventh; Moats, eighth; Shirley, ninth; Sypolt, 14th; and Bolyard, 19th.
Preston JROTC instructor and rifle team coach Col. Jay Craig said the team is "quality." He hopes to show others that quality at the NRA National Championships in Idaho and/or the National Junior Olympics in Bowling Green, Ky., both in July.
"The big thing is funding the trip," Craig said.
The Army, which partially funds the school JROTC program, may kick in some meals, but the rest must be raised or paid by parents.
Craig also has to have those two Daisy air rifles repaired. Daisy will fix its air rifles for $55, if they're mailed back to the company. Preston's kids are shooting with "sporter rifles" bought by a local veterans organization about five years ago, "and they've had quite a few shots fired through them," Craig observed.
New rifles are about $300.
This is the 10th year for Preston's rifle team. Though all of this year's team are enrolled in the school's JROTC program, it's not a requirement to be on the team. They rely on one another to relieve the pressure before matches, so even things like a falling target that interrupts the flow of the match doesn't rattle them.
"I don't know what I'd do without the laughter," Bolyard said.
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West Virginia [University] has won 13 national championships in rifle since 1983 and was first runner-up six times and had 16 individual champions during that timespan.
But I don't see exactly how this applies to a photo of the high school team. And by-the-way, if you had not heard they did reinstate the WVU rifle team that had been axed previously along with a few other sports teams.
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