The last of the 2009 JROTC Air Rifle Service Championships concluded on 27-28 February at Camp Perry, Ohio when the Civilian Marksmanship Program played host to the best Navy JROTC shooters from all over the country. This was the third weekend in a row that a major junior championship was held in the CMP’s new Camp Perry Marksmanship Center, with its 80-firing point electronic target equipped air gun range.

This marked the second stage of competition for the high school age cadets who qualified for this competition. These shooters had to qualify from the initial field of 2,885 Navy Cadets from 372 Units who participated in the Navy’s JROTC postal competition last fall. From that initial group, only 199 Cadets advanced to the 2009 Navy JROTC Air Rifle Championship. The qualifiers represented Navy Units from all across the Continental USA and Alaska. Qualifying to compete in the JROTC Championships was a significant accomplishment for all of the Cadets who competed at Camp Perry.

Shooting in the JROTC Championships provided the unique opportunity for many of the athletes to use electronic targets for the first time. These systems provide instant scoring. The CMP’s Competitor Tracker Internet-based results system also enabled the CMP to post live, continually updated results on its website. But the new target system at the Camp Perry range now takes the concept of live results on the Internet to an even higher level that goes far beyond just posting scores on the web. For the first time anywhere, not only the scores, but also live target images of the shooters in the JROTC Championships were displayed on the Internet. This meant that anyone anywhere in the world could see the exact same display screen that competitors on the range see to follow shooters’ progress live, shot-by-shot, from their personal computers. Several schools took advantage of this new technology and set-up projection screens in classrooms so that students could watch their classmates compete. Coaches and parents were also pulling out their laptops on the range so they could track multiple shooters at the same time. In all, there were over 15,000 web hits on the 2009 Navy JROTC Air Rifle Championship results page during the two days of competition.

The competition consisted of two days of three-position 3x20 air rifle competition. Competing cadets were divided into Sporter and Precision rifle classes. Both team and individual champions were honored on the basis of the total aggregate score from the two days. To determine the Individual Champions, the top eight shooters from the two-day competition in each rifle class shot a 10-shot final on Saturday that was added to their aggregate score to determine the winners in each class.

Just as in the previous two weekends, there were several impressive performances shot in the Navy JROTC Championship, including six new Navy JROTC National Records. In the Precision class, 2008 National JROTC Precision Team Champion, Union Grove HS from McDonough, Georgia set a Navy team National Record with a 2321 on the first day. The team ended with a 4634 total and a 37-point victory over the second place Luella High School Team. Ironically, the Union Grove alternate, Kayla Dorsey, shot a 584 on the first day and again on the second day to total 1168, the second highest precision aggregate in the match. Unfortunately since Dorsey was not selected for the four-person scoring team her score counted only in the team alternates competition and did not count towards the team total. The firing team members for Union Grove HS were Abigail Casey, 1170, Steven Frazier, 1165, Tiffani Potter, 1151 and Juli Yoder, 1148. The team was coached by SCPO Ralph Varnadoe.

The top Precision Individual shooter of the weekend was Matthew Martin of Chugiak HS, who traveled all the way from Anchorage, Alaska to compete. Martin entered the final in second place, 2-points behind Abigail Casey of Union Grove. A strong 101.0 final gave Martin the edge he needed to move into first to claim the championship with a 1269.0 aggregate score. Casey finished second with a 1264.9 and Jacob Brown of Luella HS in Locust Grove, Georgia finished third with a 1264.5.