A Birthday Story  You have to love stories of unbridled enthusiasm—even if they are a little expensive at times. In November, 1998, Judy Hill’s son Chris wanted a new air rifle for his birthday. She dutifully inquired as to what kind he wanted, thinking that he was talking about something to replace his old and broken BB gun. Chris showed her a picture on the Internet of an Anschütz M2002CA. She asked the price. “About $1,500” was the reply. A mother-son conversation ensued. “For a BB gun!?,” was mother’s astonished shriek. “It’s a precision air rifle,” Chris corrected. “Where would you use it?” “There are competitions.” “Where?”

. “High schools compete against each other.” “Well, your school doesn’t have a rifle team or any place to shoot it.” “We could start a rifle team.” Mother in her eternal wisdom promised, “OK, you get a rifle team started at your school, and I’ll buy your rifle,” thinking that the issue would soon be forgotten. In January, Chris went to the principal of his school, Woodward Academy, in College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. He asked to start a rifle team. He was told to get some information about high school rifle teams and find a faculty sponsor. Then they would talk about it. Chris spent several weeks researching the sport of shooting and high school rifles teams. He found a faculty sponsor who agreed to serve a coach. He also found a range that Woodward Academy could use for practice and competitions.  The Hill family contacted the Wolf Creek Olympic range that was only a few miles from the school and met Gary Anderson, then the director of the facility. Gary was enthusiastic about adding another team to the high school roster and pointed them in the direction of Major Larry Pendergrass, coach at nearby Creekside High School and director of the Georgia High School Association’s state championship competition. Major Pendergrass was a wealth of information. He invited Chris to one of his practices and even let him shoot one of their Anschütz rifles.  Chris took the information—costs, equipment, rules, range, competitions, everything—back to the principal. He even had a Power Point presentation ready, but never got the chance to show it. The principal, Ron McCollum, gave permission before it came to that. The newly formed team began practice in September 1999. When the next GHSA rifle season began in January 2000, Woodward Academy was assigned to compete in the strongest region in the state, but finished with a remarkable 6 win-6 loss record in its first season. When their second season began in January 2001, all team members were back except one senior who graduated. With some talented new shooters developing, they improved steadily through the season and posted 10-2 season, made the playoffs in their area for the state championship. Woodward surprised lots of people by finishing 3rd in the state meet behind the last two years’ state champion teams. Woodward Academy’s team used the Wolf Creek Olympic Range (Tom Lowe Shooting Grounds) for their first two seasons. Unfortunately, Fulton County decided to close the range in early November. Now with all four starters on their 2001 team returning, they had no place to practice or host their home matches. The school gave them an old cafeteria from an unused elementary school on the school’s campus. The team spent the Thanksgiving holiday scraping, painting, moping, and cleaning to set up a range that became the new home of the Woodward Academy Rifle Team.  Just after solving their range crisis, the team entered the Gary Anderson Invitational that is held in Atlanta each year in December and attracts the best high school rifle teams from all over the Southeast. In a match that included all of the teams that will contend for the 2002 Georgia High School Rifle Championship in April, the Woodward Academy Rifle Team posted a score of 2272 x 2400 to win the overall team championship. They had gone from nothing to winning a major national three-position air rifle tournament in two years and along the way had to overcome the loss of their range that left them with no place to practice for the first two weeks in November. And Chris, of course, had long since gotten his rifle that he used to become a two-year starter on a rifle team that has become one of the exciting success stories of the fast-growing high school three-position air rifle program in the U. S.