Sharpshooters becoming growing part of Jasper sports program

JASPER, Ind. (AP) - The sound of .22-caliber rifle fire filled the basement of American Legion Post 147 in Jasper on Dec. 11 as 26 young people, including members of the local Southern Indiana Sharp Shooters, competed in an invitational air rifle shooting match as a part of the American Legion’s national junior shooting sports program.

In its third year, the program has grown immensely, according to coach Daniel Lawson, and offers youth ages 10 through 18 the opportunity to compete locally and nationally.

Shooting clubs from Columbus, Seymour, Georgetown and Versailles traveled to Jasper on Dec. 11 to square off against members of the Jasper-based Southern Indiana Sharpshooters. The competition required shooters to fire 10 shots at three separate 10-bull targets from prone, kneeling and standing positions for a total of 30 shots. The top three shooters were Emilee Seitz, Ashton Smith and Lane Parks.

Emilee Seitz, the 13-year-old daughter of Katrina and Mike Seitz of Velpen, took home the top honors for the second time in 2016 after earning gold during the club’s 2015-16 competition in March.

Lawson said Southern Indiana Sharpshooters has grown in numbers since it was established in 2013, matching the trend of the junior shooting sports program’s growth across the national landscape.

Programs are usually sponsored by a local American Legion post - as is Jasper’s club - but can be organized and sponsored by any shooting organization or started from the ground up, according to Lawson.

Saturday was the group’s first invitational competition, Lawson said, and the program is still working toward a set schedule of matches.

“We reach out to other shooting clubs to organize matches that the other clubs are willing to come compete in,” Lawson said. “On a national level, we compete in what’s called a postal shoot, where we order the targets through the mail and they’re scored by an electronic system called the Orion System.”

Lawson said the group purchased and installed the $1,000 electronic scoring system in 2015, which allows the club’s shooters to compare their scores to shooters from legion and non-legion clubs across the country. The system electronically scans all the targets, scores them and inputs the data into an online results system. This is the club’s second year using the electronic system, and the members have already had the chance to complete a couple of U.S. Marine Corps ROTC high school shooting matches with clubs from Tennessee and North Carolina.

Lawson believes as the group continues to grow and its shooters’ abilities improve, more opportunities will become available to compete on the national level.

“Competition is great for the body and mind. If you’re not shooting as well as you’d like, it tells you that you need more practice,” Lawson said.

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Source: Dubois County Herald, https://bit.ly/2hKEqRl

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Information from: The Herald, https://www.dcherald.com