11/12/2006

SDHS rifle team poised for winning year
By Dolores E. Pike

According to Commander Christopher Deming, coach of the Stephen Decatur High School (SDHS) rifle team, they are off to good start as they work hard to repeat last year's winning season. Last spring saw the team take the state championship of the National Rifle Association and place second in the Junior Olympics in the state. On an individual level, Matt Bertino was the state champion for the National Rifle Association.

The SDHS rifle team competes in an eight school league of Junior ROTC units located on the Eastern Shore and they shoot between 15 and 20 matches a year.  SDHS won the league last year and of the three multiple matches they have shot this year, they won one and placed second in each of the other two.  Again Matt performed exceptionally well at the Annapolis match three weeks ago where he shot a national record with a score of 277, beating the existing national record by one point and the Navy record by four points.  In the match that they won a week ago Matt was second, tying the national record that was broken by the winner of the match.

The members of the sporter team are Travis Bush, Matt Bertino, Stephen Kosicki, Elizabeth Rodden, Jake Terlizzi and John Valentine.  The members of the novice team are Garrett Allbritton, Dean Bush, Stephanie Giles and Joshua O'Ferrall, who placed third in this category in their most recent match.  The precision team members are Kara Smith and Corinna Giles who shoot a different rifle and compete in a different division.  The cost to equip a sporter team member is between $800 and $1,000 while equipping a precision team member costs about twice that much.

"The skills of discipline and concentration that the shooters learn are skills that can be applied to any other thing they do, not just shooting.  Shooting is a sport anybody can do.  You do not have to be tall or big or strong.  It is open to anybody at any age and you compete against each other equally," Commander Deming said, noting that air rifle is both an NCAA college scholarship sport and an Olympic sport.

In describing a match, Commander Deming said that the target the shooter is aiming at from a distance of 10 meters is a bull's-eye the size of a pencil point.   The shooter competes in three different positions: prone (laying down), offhand (standing up) and kneeling.  A typical match consists of either a half course (30 shots) or a full course (60 shots) and a match would consist of 10 or 20 shots in all three positions.  The recent match that the SDHS team hosted ran from 8:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. and their range can accommodate 20 shooters at one time.

The members of the SDHS rifle team must maintain at least a "c" average according to their coach and they practice two times a week for about three hours.  He said the season runs through the entire school year and extends through July because that is when the national competition is.  Last year the team traveled to Bowling Green, KY to compete in the Junior Olympic Nationals.

"We hope to do well the rest of the year.  We are looking forward to the NJROTC area five championship (Maryland, Virginia, DC and West Virginia) and we compete as an area.  If we do well, we will be invited to attend the Navy Regional Championship at Ft. Benning, GA.  We went last year," said Commander Deming.