High school rifle teams taking aim at scholarships, Olympics
As the yellow school bus drove off into swirling snow flurries last week in Bedford County, a dozen teenagers shuffled into a lowslung building, dropped their book bags, and grabbed their rifles.
They had all skipped caffeine at school and cut back on sugar to keep their heart rates down and their nerves steady. They donned thick canvas uniforms to hold their bodies rigid when they aimed. Some knelt. Some stood. A few lay prone on mats spread out on the cold floor. Just around 3:30 p.m., starting time for the Everett Area High School rifle team’s practice, the teens loaded .22-caliber bullets into their rifles, $2,000 to $5,000 worth of hardware each, rested their cheeks on the stocks, and held their breath.
In the moment between each heartbeat, they fired. For the next two hours, the indoor range at the Everett Sportsman’s Club filled with pops, like muffled firecrackers. The best shooters can hit a bull’s-eye not much bigger than a grain of sand, and the teens who do it consistently can get scholarships to compete on the collegiate level and earn spots on Olympic teams.
“I’m working on my applications now,” said Laurel Kuhne, a top Everett shooter. “I’m looking at West Point or the Naval Academy.”
Bob Lombardi, executive director of the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association, estimates there are 54 shooting teams for boys in the state and 44 for girls, and many receive funding from a division of the National Rifle Association. Most teams hail from the great stretch of forest, farmland and blue-collar towns between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, where gun ownership is bipartisan and hunting is ingrained.
It’s even harder to get a bead nationally. Data on the total number of U.S. high schools with varsity shooting teams — whether .22 rifles, air guns, or trap — isn’t
available from any one organization, including the NRA. The Civilian Marksmanship Program, a national advocate for firearms training and education, counts 2,000 high school rifle teams in 45 states among its affiliates but suggested “the actual numbers are probably higher.”
A 2016 report by the National Shooting Sports Foundation said more Americans engaged in target shooting the previous year than in golf, soccer, baseball or tackle football. The same report, however, found an up-and-then-down trend among children ages 7 to 17. In 2010, for instance, 2.7 million children were involved in target shooting with rifles; within five years, that number had fallen to 1.3 million. Target shooting with shotguns hit its highest level of participation in 2004, with 1.8 million kids; in 2015, those ranks dwindled to 945,000.
On the college level, the number of Division I programs appears to be decreasing. In Pennsylvania, the last one — at the University of the Sciences in West Philadelphia, of all places — was dropped in June.
West Virginia University, a dynasty in the sport, nearly lost its program until state lawmakers stepped in.
In high school shooting sports, there are no big motivational speeches, no yelling or slamming of clipboards by coaches. They’re trying to keep a zen atmosphere in the range.
“You want them as calm and mellow as possible,” said Ethan Cessna, Everett’s head coach. “I want them to come and get in their zone.”
Many teams, like Everett, are coed, with students competing in meets against other high schools, whittling down to individual and team championships toward winter’s end.
Laurel Kuhne’s sister, Kestrel, was a state champion for Everett in 2016 and now shoots for the Naval Academy. Laurel took second place in the 3-P Smallbore State Rifle Championships in February, finishing one point behind teammate Luke Brambley. Often in rifle shooting, the difference between the top spot and second is less than a millimeter on the target sheet.
The NRA Foundation is a major supporter of youth shooting programs. Large checks written to the Everett Sportsmen Junior Rifle Club hang on the walls there, one for $3,632. The East Stroudsburg High School South rifle team, competing in the 10team Northeastern Pennsylvania Interscholastic Rifle League, got $5,000 in 2016.
The foundation, according to its website, has given “$335 million in grant funding in support of the shooting sports.”
Given the tens of thousands of gun-related fatalities in the United States, the idea of students handling firearms raises many hackles. According to Everytown, a nonprofit created after the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in 2012, there have been 269 school shootings since 2013.
But proponents say competitive shooting is arguably the safest sport in high school. Injury rates for the sport, according to the Civilian Marksmanship Program, are “far below the injury rates for all other youth sports where statistics are kept.” All students on the Everett team must take an NRA safety class, and the rifles they use are stored in locked cases, in locked rooms, at the gun clubs where they practice and compete. The guns are not taken to school.