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Fort Sill camper, Matthew Dunlap, from Caney Creek HS,
TX, mentally prepares for camp finals.
Much focus was given to mental training in the camps.
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As usual, the summer of 2005 sent the Civilian Marksmanship Program on the road as the Junior Three-Position Summer Camp program traveled across the country to bring marksmanship instruction to youth. Again under the guidance of Dr. Dan Durben, the staff had many new faces among the counselor ranks but that didn’t slow anyone down as the summer got underway.
So who was the staff that made the summer camps a success once again? Dr. Durben, a professor at Black Hills State in Black Hills, South Dakota, was a 1988 Olympian, the U.S. National coach from 1996 to 2000, and is currently the U.S. Paralympics coach. He was assisted by 2004 Paralympics silver medalist and new head coach of the University of Alaska-Fairbanks rifle team, Dan Jordan. Head counselor was Sommer Wood, who shot for the Clemson University club rifle team, and is also a writer and photographer for the CMP.
Counselors this summer came from a wide range of experiences and backgrounds. Katy Crabtree was one of the four freshmen in the group coming off her first season at the University of Texas, El Paso. Natasha Dinsmore, also off her first season at West Virginia University, was one of the newer shooters in the group. Her first exposure to shooting came at a German shooting club as a foreign exchange student in high school. Stephanie Elmore just finished her freshman year as a Zip at the University of Akron in Ohio. Vicki Goss was the lone member from the University of Kentucky to return to the camps this year after last year’s staff consisted of five Wildcats. Goss joined the staff later in the camp season, having taken the first part of the summer to train and attended classes. Also joining the camp staff later in the summer were brothers and teammates at Jacksonville State University in Alabama, James and Joseph Hall. Both are on the U.S. National Team and were members of the 2005 Jacksonville State team that won the NCAA Air Rifle National Championship. Katie Harrington is also a member of a team that was making waves at the NCAA Championships. She just finished her freshman year as a University of Nebraska Cornhusker. Morgan Hicks had an exciting year leading into the camps. She was the 2004 NCAA Air Rifle Individual Champion and a member of the 2004 U.S. Olympic team in Athens. She is also a member of the U.S. National team and a graduate assistant for the rifle team at Murray State in Kentucky. Ben Jochum is a team member and the coach of the University of Nebraska club rifle team. He was also an original member of the Homestead 4-H club in Nebraska that has been nearly unbeatable among the sporter ranks for several years now. Finishing out the group was Jason Labella, a graduate student and new head coach of the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology rifle team in Terre Haute, Indiana.
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At Fort Benning, campers had the opportunity to train on Scat systems. these advanced laser training devices are used by top shooters throughout the world. |
In addition to new faces this summer the camps also traveled to three new places in addition return stops at Camp Perry and Fort Benning. The first stop of the summer was in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
West Mesa High School and Maj Mark Hendricks hosted a packed gym for one of the largest camps of the summer. The second camp was held in Beatrice, Nebraska with the Homestead 4-H shooting club. The camp was the smallest of the summer but the small size allowed of a lot of personalized coaching for the shooters involved. For the final new location of the summer, the camp hit the Wild West at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. For this camp the Army included a military weapons demonstration, and gave campers a chance to fire M-16’s in their combat simulator.
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| Gary Anderson, CMP Director, shows Sea Cadets the basics of Three-Position Air Rifle shooting. Anderson was the lead Instructor for the first week of the camp. |
While at Camp Perry and at Fort Benning though, things were not just business as usual. Upon arriving at Camp Perry, the summer camps made a return to the basics as they teamed up with Gary Anderson and additional instructors to teach the first marksmanship camp ever held for the Sea Cadets organization. The Sea Cadets are a youth development program affiliated with the Navy, separate from Navy JROTC. The program has never sponsored marksmanship before, so the CMP provided the 60 cadets in attendance their first exposure to three position air rifle by means of a two week course. By the end of the camp, which included a biathlon, all the cadets qualified for marksmanship medals, 25 of those being expert.
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The CMP camp concludes with a 3x20 match and finals.
The top eight shooters in Sporter and Precision advanced to the
finals round. |
The facilities at Fort Benning also allowed some changes to the camp routine. Not only is it one of the top facilities in the country to shoot in, campers and coaches also got a chance to experience an advanced training tool when CMP provided two SCAT training systems. These laser training systems were a new addition to the camps this year. By training on SCAT the shooters reinforced the techniques that were being taught in the classroom, and allowed coaches a first hand opportunity to learn how to effectively use a similar system for their own program.
Hopefully when the 2005 camp season came to an end, many campers returned home ready to begin their up coming season with the tools needed to have a successful year. Pictures from the Summer Camps can be viewed at http://www.odcmp.com/Photos/05/index.htm.
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