TargetTalk

My son is 15 year-old, he shoots about 535 for AP60 at home.

He will be applying to college in two years. I am just wondering what does it take to participate in U.S. Olympic Trial for air pistol. I just think that "participated in U.S. Olympic Trial" might be something that he can mention in his college application to make him stand out a little bit amongst the applicants.

How is U.S. Olympic trial conducted? At Colorado Spring? Open to all with an air pistol or is there a minimum qualification? What is the process involved?

Doral wrote:My son is 15 year-old, he shoots about 535 for AP60 at home.

He will be applying to college in two years. I am just wondering what does it take to participate in U.S. Olympic Trial for air pistol. I just think that "participated in U.S. Olympic Trial" might be something that he can mention in his college application to make him stand out a little bit amongst the applicants.

How is U.S. Olympic trial conducted? At Colorado Spring? Open to all with an air pistol or is there a minimum qualification? What is the process involved?

Check the USA Shooting web site- http://www.usashooting.com/teamUSA.php

Without going through the process of joining the national development team or junior national team, what is the qualification for participating in the Olympic trial? Is it open to all US citizens or there is still some strict minimum formal match qualification?

Doral

I try to stay positive and surround myself with folks who are positive. At the moment I might just be reacting.

When you get through figuring out how to simply place "tried out for the Olympic team in air pistol" on your son's application to college you might just as well add some more. I can tell you one that is simpler than USA Shooting. USA Archery. Anyone can show up at the Olympic Trials for archery. There has not been a minimum in the past. They also spread the trials around the country so you would not have to take your son far to get to one. Great resume builder.

What will this teach your son? I hope he is not going to apply to any of our military academies.

It would be great to see him within the next two years shoot in the 580's and earn a spot. He, you, and I would be quite proud of him.

Jack

Go to http://www.usashooting.com/policy.php

Fifth from the bottom is the 2012 Olympic Selection Procedure. You and your son can read it together.

Doral, what schools are you planning on having your son apply for? If we are taking about Ivy league or several other like minded institutions, you might not want anything involving shooting on his application. If you are open to suggestions and your son is getting good, as he seems to be, why not consider one of the schools that has a pistol team and offers scholarships for same? There are a few of those around the country, other than the military academies. Isabel

M.I.T. which won the national collegiate air pistol championship last year.

Just so folks know, MIT does have an excellent pistol team, but MIT doesn't offer ANY athletic scholarships for any sport. Also, due to recent funding cuts, the pistol team no longer has varsity status, and is now a "club sport". It is being kept alive largely by alumni donations.

The "Club Sport" designation isn't necessarily a bad thing. West Point's pistol team is in the same boat. It removes a lot of artificial restrictions on fund raising, when you can compete, when you can have practices, etc. MIT decided a number of years ago that ALL varsity sports have to operate by NCAA (National College Athletics Assoc.) rules, whether they are NCAA or not. Rifle is an NCAA sport, but pistol isn't.

Over time, we hope to collect enough money to fund an endowment to keep the team going for the long haul. There are some disagreements with the university about how that gets set up. They want full control over it, which means (for example) that if they decide to kill pistol as a sport altogether, they could grab the money. There is historically a lot of mistrust between the alumni & the school because of past actions, and demoting the status of pistol hasn't exactly helped. In order to ensure some degree of control, we may have to set up our own non-profit corporation to run the endowment, which would then dole out the funds to MIT.

If anyone has a million dollars or two lying around that they would care to donate, that would be a big help. Heck, we'll take anything we can get, including loose change. If someone wants to help out, you can contact me via PM.

Sorry to hijack this thread a bit. To get slightly back on topic, there is also a Junior Olympic program to consider. I would think participation in that would look just as good on an application. The local Junior Olympic pistol tryouts are shot at MIT.

Become a member and I will send you my # and i will tell you how it works, John