Posted 8:04 pm Sunday, August 30, 2009
East Texans Aid In National Championship
By STEVE KNIGHT
Outdoor Writer
When it comes to competitive shooting in the United States, all roads lead to Camp Perry, Ohio.
Outdoor Writer
When it comes to competitive shooting in the United States, all roads lead to Camp Perry, Ohio.
During the summer months, shooters of all disciplines come to Camp Perry to participate in national matches conducted by the Civilian Marksmanship Program and the National Rifle Association. The National matches began in 1903 and have been held at Camp Perry since 1907.
The first week of August six Texas shooters, including three from East Texas participated in the prestigious National Trophy Team match and came home with the Soldier of Marathon National Trophy as the highest scoring civilian team.
The team, shooting under the sponsorship of the Texas State Rifle Association, included Rick Crawford of Kilgore, Jason Utley of Mineola, Robert Langham of Tyler, Dr. Jeffery Lin of Fort Worth, Wallace McDaniel of Abilene and Keith Stephens of College Station. It was the first win for the Texas team since 1964.
Shooting in the Service Rifle Class, the shooters used military-like AR 15s using 5.56 mm ammunition. In competition each shooter fires 50 rounds at distance from 200 to 600 yards with peep sights, including rapid fire rounds at 200 and 300 yards.
To compete on the Texas team a shooter must first be willing to spend a week in Ohio. After that the team coaches are looking for someone who has had a good year in competition and has typically won at the highest level.
"You have to have one new shooter each year," explain Langham. "That was Wallace McDaniel. He is a policeman from Abilene. The rest of us had shot before."
The trick, Langham explained, is to get them to shoot in a team format the way they would in individual competition. Fortunately that happened with the shooters averaging 482.6 points as the team scored a 2,895 out of a possible 3,000, just 20 points off the all-time civilian record. The Texans' score was the fourth best at the shoot. It ranked behind the U.S. Army, the U.S. Army National Guard and the U.S. Army Reserves.
"Every state that has a sanctioned and recognized organization can send a team to the National matches, and the military branches send teams also. However, the civilians and military don't shoot against each other. There are about 100 teams shooting in the National Trophy Team Match. It is a pretty prestigious thing but it is unknown outside of the shooting world," Langham said.
For Kilgore's Crawford, the championship is the culmination of an effort that started in 1989 when he was the new shooter on the Texas team.
"This is my 21st year to go. It was what we have been going for this whole time. It is what I have been chasing forever. We have had some good teams in the past. This was a good mix of shooters. It just kind of happened," Crawford said.
Crawford, who finished with a 490 score and was named to the six-man National civilian team, said no one on the team realized how well they were doing during the competition. The key, he noted, was that everyone shot near their average and with four of the six shooters being either current or prior state champs in either the service rifle or high power rifle classifications, those averages added up.
"It took a while to grasp what happened," Crawford said.
The shooter, who has a career best of 495 out of 500, said the Camp Perry shoot is a more high-pressured event than any other competition they shoot.
"It is the Super Bowl, World Series, Indianapolis 500 and all those things rolled up into one," Crawford said. To calm his nerves, he reminds himself that the targets at the National aren't any different than at the Panola Gun Club, and that some of the shooters may not be as good.
Crawford thinks having three shooters from the same area helped form a better team mentality, something the Texas squad has been emphasizing in recent years. What makes their win possibly more impressive is that it was one of the few teams at the shoot that didn't include former military shooters. Only one member of the Texas team was ever in the Armed Services, but he wasn't trained as a shooter.
This was Utley's fourth year on the state team, but at 24 he is the youngest member. While at the Camp Perry shoot he also competed and won the Vintage Military Rifle competition with a 1954 Swiss K31, a 7.5X55-caliber rifle. Of the two competitions, Utley said he was most excited about the team championship.
"I think this is a bigger, more prestigious thing," he explained.
Utley has been going to the Nationals for 10 years, starting in the junior division. His introduction into competitive shooting came from, in all places, a Mineola High School band class. Classmate Daniel Miller was involved in small bore target shooting at the time and invited Utley to come see what the sport was about.
"I didn't shoot that great," Utley said of his effort in the team competition. I shot pretty much average. None of the courses were really that great, but I didn't any wheels fall off."
Like Crawford, Utley said he tries not to get caught up in the hoopla of the event by realizing he shoots against as good or better shooters throughout the year in Texas. However, he did feel the added pressure of wanting to do as well as possible for his teammates.
"In a way there is a little more pressure because there are others relying on you, but you can't think that way. The more you think that way the more you are going to screw up," Utley noted.
While the team competition was once considered a side event for the Texas team, Crawford said it is now a priority and preparations for the 2010 team are already under way.
"Right now we are looking for next year's new shooter. It is a pretty high level of competition to break in to," Crawford said.
