TargetTalk

Is anyone planning to get a junior air pistol team going this year?

We are just getting ours going, and am hoping that junior air pistol will grow like 3P air rifle has. It sure takes a lot less equipment than rifle does!

If you are planning to start-up an air pistol program, please let us know when and where.

Thanks.


Jay V
AIAC
Arlington Heights, IL
www.aiac-airguns.org

I am putting this into our plan for 2005 - 2006 season. In the coming year, we are focusing on constructing a permanent air rifle/pistol range, instead of our temp range we build every week.

Jim

Hi

Who owns your building where your permanent range is? We too build and tear down the range in our County Extension office auditorium. That's a pain, but the real problem in my mind is that the extension office secretary seems to delight in scheduling a paying customer over us.

Glad you have your own range.

I'm considering taking the Pistol Instructor class 4H / NRA and then taking the Coach's course since I'm shooting Pistol a lot better than anything else right now. I intend to teach / coach what I'm shooting in competition, which was going to be rifle, but I'm shooting pistol SO much better.

Mike
Wichita KS

Mike,

I run the youth program for my local shooting club (Tri-County Sportsman's League) in Saline, Michigan. The club has about 1100 adult members, 40 acres of land, outdoor pistol, outdoor rifle (100 yards or less) and trap ranges. 3-D archery too.

I use the bottom floor ouf the club house. We are presently working out the details of constructing a new multi-use building which will be quite large. It will NOT have indoor firearm ranges (a few too many issues) but we will be able to permanently build in pellet traps and lighting. I cannot wait!! Site plans are in for bank and township approval right now.

JPM

Jay - looking forward to using your pellet trap plans.

Hi Jay

We just widened our range 3' to better handle 4 shooters on the line at a time. This is a permanent indoor air gun range and this will be our first year recruiting and training for a jr. Pistol team. Like most things we expect slow growth for awhile but who knows? We are in Alaska and the idea of shooting indoors in the winter has a certain appeal when it is below zero outside ;~)

Jay V wrote:Is anyone planning to get a junior air pistol team going this year?

We are just getting ours going, and am hoping that junior air pistol will grow like 3P air rifle has. It sure takes a lot less equipment than rifle does!

If you are planning to start-up an air pistol program, please let us know when and where.

Thanks.


Jay V
AIAC
Arlington Heights, IL
www.aiac-airguns.org

Genesee Conservation League, in Rochester, NY has had a junior program running a while. It used to be funded by Crossman Air Guns back in the mid 80's when Frank Briggs (the current USAMU International Pistol caoch) started the program. I was a junior in this program and it went well. He left Rochester to go coach the AMU and the program went down hill some. Now, I'm older and have begun to start running the program with hopes to get a great program up and running again. I am interested in having postal matches (air pistol, air rifle, .22) if any of you guys have junior programs running. It would be fun for the kids to compete against each other via the mail.

Andris: If you would email me at bawilli@attglobal.net, I can send you some info on an air gun postal league that I run. Open to anyone at any level. Fun and good competition.
Don

We started a junior team at Massanutten Military Academy, Woodstock, Va.
in September. We are making some progress but have trouble finding competition with other juniors. We have our own range.
Randolph

omegaman wrote:We started a junior team at Massanutten Military Academy, Woodstock, Va.
in September. We are making some progress but have trouble finding competition with other juniors. We have our own range.
Randolph

Hi Randolph,

Great to hear that you have gotten a new team going.

We started in May with 3 guns and 3 shooters, and will add 4 more pistols in a couple of months. They are progressing well, with 1 heading to the NRA Junior Air Gun Nationals in Idaho in a couple of weeks (July 10).

It seems that if they have a decent background in air rifle (all of our pistol shooters shot AR first) they can move to pistol pretty easily. We have given all of our students a chance to try pistol, and then made selections based on coaches recommendations for the limited spots currently available. Our program is about 3 to 1 - air rifle to air pistol at this point.

The area match directors have agreed to add an air pistol relay to the 3P air matches next year. 40-shots for juniors. Compared to a 3P air rifle match they are quick and easy. That way when a team travels to a match they can compete with both teams at one time - which is nice because most of the matches are about 100 mi away. We will add AP to our home matches also.


Jay V
IL
www.aiac-airguns.org