For ten years the Civilian Marksmanship Program has overseen the scoring of Navy, Army and Marine Corps JROTC 3x10 three-position air rifle postal competitions. These annual postals now determine which JROTC unit teams and individual cadets advance to compete in their respective service’s Eastern or Western JROTC shoulder-to-shoulder championships. From those Region Championships, the best unit teams and individuals representing each service advance to the JROTC National Championships. This year, for the first time, the Air Force joined in the fall postals with 14 units submitting targets. Altogether, 5,974 cadets and 1,101 JROTC unit teams participated in this year’s postals.

Postal targets could be fired in October, November or the first days of December, with a target mailing deadline of 5 December. In all, 17,922 targets were scored between the 1st and 15th of December when all scores were posted on the CMP web site. That is an increase of 2006 when 16,008 targets were scored.

To handle such a large number of targets, the CMP used its state of the art electronic scoring system called Orion. This system uses Visual Imaging Scoring (VIS) technology to score 10-bull paper targets that have been scanned at 300dpi or better. This system was first introduced for the 2006 Postals and the new technology allowed scores to be posted shot by shot on CMP’s website. This is a huge improvement from 2005 and before when teams of 20-25 scorers were needed to hand score all of the targets. The Orion system also eliminates much of the range of errors that occur when human scorers are used.

Scores for the 2007 Air Force, Army, Marine Corps and Navy Postal Competitions can be found on the CMP homepage at http://www.odcmp.com. The top individual precision score in the 2007 JROTC postal was a 296 total fired by Steven Frazier of Union Grove HS NJROTC in McDonough, GA and the top sporter score was a 283 fired by Matthew Berkley of Ripley HS AJROTC in Ripley, Tennessee. The overall top team scores were an 1159 precision team total fired by East Coweta HS Marine Corps JROTC in Sharpsburg, Georgia and a 1099 sporter team score fired by Ozark HS Army JROTC in Ozark, Missouri. To see all of these scores including the top scores in each of the three service individual and team competitions, open the CMP home page at http://www.odcmp.com and click on “Results” below the icon for the JROTC scores you want to view.

Score data and shot group print-outs like the ones shown here for the top sporter and precision class shooters may be downloaded from the CMP website. To obtain a score data sheet, open an individual results list for one of the services and then click on the “Aggregate” total that is shown in red for the shooter whose scores you wish to see. A *.pdf file with the shot data and a facsimile of each position’s shot group will download.

The top Air Force, Army, Marine Corps and Navy unit teams and at-large individual cadets are now qualified to advance to either the JROTC Eastern Region Championships that will take place on 14-17 February at Fort Benning, Georgia or the JROTC Western Region Championships that will take place on 21-23 February at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Congratulations to all competitors for another successful JROTC Postal! The initial list of qualifiers for the 2008 Eastern and Western JROTC Region Championships is posted at http://www.odcmp.com/3P/jrotcinvites.htm.

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