Lying on her stomach, she brings the rifle up onto her shoulder. With the rifle loaded and cocked, she zeros in on the targets through the built-in scope. She holds in her breath, and squeezes the trigger.
Bang! The sounds of the Daisy air rifle pellets hitting the paper targets are not unusual sounds to the Navy Junior Reserve Officer Training [NJROTC] students that use the new marksmanship range. The campus construction projects not only brought in new gyms and an arena, but it also brought in excitement to the NJROTC students for their new facilities.
“I love it. It’s the most awesome thing in the world,” said sophomore Erin Kielty, Seaman, one of the many students eager about the new range.
“The [marksmanship range] was built as a kind of multi-purpose room,” Commander Bob Stuart said. “For us it’s designed for the range so we can shoot after school here and practice, but also it’s the supply store room. It’s our formation area when we have uniform inspections, and sometimes the P.T. [physical training] team comes up here and does sit-ups and push-ups. It’s just extremely useful.”
Stuart also said that only a handful of schools have a permanent marksmanship range.
“Up until now, we had been shooting in the [old NJROTC classroom],” Stuart said. “We had to move the desks every afternoon to set up a temporary range, so that was difficult.”
Stuart thinks that having the permanent range gives the NJROTC program a better advantage over other schools that have to shoot in the gym.
Though no students are complaining about the new classroom and range, but some have some new ideas that could improve the marksmanship range.
“[If] the shooting range [had] movable targets that’d be awesome,” said senior John Savage, Cadet Lieutenant Junior Grade. “Besides that, it’s perfect.”
The new range is definitely making the students excited, but senior Jarrett Ray, Cadet Lieutenant Junior Grade, said it is also pushing them to work hard.
“[The new marksmanship range] helps motivate the kids already in the unit saying ‘We have this, now let’s make it look like we at least deserve it,'” Ray said.
The NJROTC program here has been a consistent state qualifier, and has been qualified to nationals for the past five years. With the new range, Stuart said he thinks the students will have a leg up on the other schools. The competitions not only include marksmanship, but also academics and P.T. teams. The next competition will be on the first weekend of November in Seguin, on the outskirts of San Antonio.
