Gloucester Alumni

By Kristen Grieco , Staff writer
Gloucester Daily Times

Walking by the cafeteria at Gloucester High School late in the afternoon, it's not uncommon to hear the crack of gunshots in unsteady intervals. A peek inside reveals a handful of teenagers in fatigues, lying on their bellies, squinting at a target with a rifle raised to their shoulder.

The Gloucester High School Junior ROTC Rifle Team conducted its practices in virtual silence except for the snapping of pellets on a paper target. Of the 132 teams that will compete in the regionals nationwide, Gloucester's rifle team is ranked No. 1. The team will compete in the eastern regionals in Georgia next month to qualify for the nationals. Three of the top shooters on the East Coast hail from Gloucester.

The team has had a winning record for nearly a century, as plaques along the walls of the high school hallway will attest. National championship trophies in the atrium date back to the 1920s.

One of their sharpest shooters, senior Selina Clancy, is aiming to better her No. 2 national rank and become the top shooter in the nation this spring, before she graduates.

Clancy, 17, joined the JROTC, a high school leadership program affiliated with the military, to increase her community service credits on her college transcripts. During a required marksman safety class, she picked up an air rifle, which is powered by carbon dioxide and shoots tiny metal pellets, and realized she was good at it.

That's how most of the students got into this niche sport, though not all had the natural talent that Clancy did. Most need long practices to hone their skills.

"I wasn't very good at first," said senior Kurt Wheeler, 18, who has been on the team for three years. "No one is. But I loved it, so I kept on it."

Several of the team members said that joining was out of character for them, and not something they necessarily thought about before they had an air rifle in their hand for the first time.

"Originally I was like, 'Oh, guns, bad, oh no,'" said senior Melissa Strangman, 17. "But then we shot and I'm like, 'Oh, this is kind of fun.'"

Sarah Taylor, a freshman, wasn't allowed to even hold a squirt gun while she was growing up. When she told her parents what she was planning to do, they were shocked.

"But I told them it's what I wanted to do, so they said I could go for it," Taylor said. "Now that they see it's a passion of mine, they're really proud of what I'm doing."

At first glance, a rifle team is about guns. But coach and JROTC instructor Richard Muth said that the air rifles are just a means to an end in teaching students about self-confidence, leadership skills and dedication. The team is a tough thing to stick to; there's no face-to-face interaction during shooting and they're not competing against other teams. The only goal the shooters have is to beat their score from the day before.

The students practice four days a week in the cafeteria, loading their air rifles with pellets and shooting them at small dots. Their goal: to shoot the dot - about the size of a period on this page - out. That's the only way to score a perfect 10.

In a sport where holding still and steady is prized, the students develop arm strength, breathing techniques and concentration. When they're aiming a shot, they say little is going through their heads.

"You just go to your happy place," Walker said.

They shoot in three positions: on their bellies, kneeling and standing. Beside them, a pole with a scope stands, giving them a way to discern where the pellet has punctured the target and strategize their next shots. The pops of the gun are sporadic as the teammates concentrate; they spend about 15 minutes in each position before their targets are handed to Muth for counting.

The students stress that their sport is not a violent one. None of the four interviewed for this article have ever hunted. The only thing they shoot are paper targets.

"We're a sport and we win, and nobody seems to notice that," Taylor said .

Students' participation in the team may pay off eventually. Colleges that have rifle teams, particularly military academies, hand out scholarships to students who join the teams. Clancy and Walker are thinking about joining ROTC at the college level next year, and finding a school with a rifle team. Strangman hopes to continue the sport after she graduates as well.

Muth is the first to point out that the team's excellent reputation can be a morale boost for its members, but said that in a competition, they're all business.

"You can tell just by listening to them, some of them have big heads," Muth said. "But when you say, 'Start on the line' all the big-headedness goes away and they focus on the one shot."