School shooters aim high
Date: Feb 11, 2007 7:13 PM
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…a mother was entering the building for her daughter’s ballet session as students were lugging in gun cases. The memory of the exchange still makes Knowles chuckle.
“She said, ‘Only in Maine could there be a rifle team downstairs and a ballet upstairs.’ “

http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/3601402.html

School shooters aim high

By CRAIG CROSBY
Staff Writer

Sunday, February 11, 2007

PITTSFIELD — Ridge Lawn watches his coach intently as Allen Knowles slips his hand down the barrel and closer to the trigger. Every move is a study in proper form.
“The closer toward the trigger guard you hold it, the better,” Knowles says.
Lawn nods, carefully takes the rifle and practices the hold as Knowles looks on.
“Start above the target and come down,” Knowles instructs. “It’s going to be hard to do this. Don’t get frustrated.”
Lawn, a freshman on Maine Central Institute’s rifle team, is learning step by step how to shoot a rifle from the standing position with the most accuracy. It is a skill that Knowles has taught his shooters, and taught well, for the past seven years. During that time, Knowles’ teams have won three overall state championships and three scholastic state championships.
“This is the seventh year,” Knowles says. “It’s still up in the air.”
Despite that success, and the program’s 30-year history at MCI, Knowles and his shooters still get quizzical looks when others hear that high schools still allow the sport. In an era when students can be suspended for taking a pocketknife to school, the 16 members of MCI’s rifle team — the roster is down from an average of 30 members during the past few years — can be found in the basement of Founders Hall each week night shooting .22-caliber bullets at targets 50 feet away.
“People outside the school, they’re amazed we’re on a rifle team,” says junior Faxon McLaughlin, a third-year shooter from Burnham.
While many are unaware that high school rifle teams exist, the sport is growing, says Julian Beale, who has coached Augusta’s Cony High School rifle team for 20 years. Schools have contacted Beale recently to inquire about forming a team. And despite the reduction in MCI’s numbers this year, existing teams are drawing more shooters, Beale said.
“I think we’re going to see more schools next year,” Beale said. “(The sport) is coed and it’s actually low cost. Some of your rural areas have the most interest.”
Beale also has coached the Capital City Junior Rifle Club since he started it 32 years ago. The club draws students of all ages from across the area. Because shooting is not organized by the Maine Principals’ Association, high school-aged club shooters compete at meets against high schools such as Cony and MCI that have school-sponsored teams.
“(Team members) are asked by other kids, ‘What’s this all about?’ ” Beale said. “That helps the sport grow.”
The sport reaches a cross-section of students. Knowles estimates that only about half of his team are hunters. Some of the best shooters, he said, often never handled a gun before entering the program. Beginners have fewer bad habits to correct, Knowles said.
“Forget everything you have learned because that’s going to change,” said junior Lewis Fitts, a third-year MCI rifleman from Palmyra.
Boys and girls generally are mixed on a squad, except for a couple of events each year in which boys and girls compete separately. Often it is the girls that have the upper hand, Knowles said.
“The girls, when they’re on the team, they usually excel,” Knowles said.
Though shooting requires muscular endurance — shooters often hold positions for up to 20 minutes without a rest — and concentration, it does not require the same athletic gifts of other sports, he added.
“Most of my team belongs to the music program,” Knowles says. “That’s always been true.”
Perhaps that is because the same concentration and perfection required to make music translate into hitting a pin-sized bull’s-eye. Students improve their shooting as they improve their concentration — skills that often mean better grades, Knowles says.
“I get feedback from the teachers,” he says. “I get kids who have started this program and it helps because it’s changed their focus. It requires a high level of concentration.”
Beale’s wife, Brenda Beale, the principal at China Middle School, has even tried to persuade struggling students to get involved with a rifle team.
“It teaches self-esteem, self-dedication and discipline,” Julian Beale said. “After they learn the fundamentals, a lot of it is going on between the ears. They have to learn concentration, which helps them in school and in other things.”
McLaughlin plays baseball for MCI, but he joined the rifle team because none of the other winter programs appealed to him.
“I’ve done a lot better in school, but I don’t know if it is because of (shooting),” he said.
The thought of high school students wielding rifles might give some people pause, but Knowles, a National Rifle Association-certified instructor, is always impressed with the care his students take with their weapons and with each other. The first week of the season is spent in the classroom discussing safety and Knowles is constantly on the prowl for a careless maneuver.
“The first few weeks, I’m really on top of these guys,” he says. “It’s incredible to go the shoots and see the teenagers. They’re so safe.”
Though rifle teams are not organized under the Maine Principals’ Association, MCI’s team follows the winter sport guidelines, which limit the seasons of the year the team can practice. And unlike other programs, MCI has no feeder programs.
Despite those limitations, MCI has had some formidable shooters.
In addition to the team championships, Olivia Haynes has won the women’s state championship two years in a row and the team has had two individual men’s state champions in the past several years. Knowles’ son, Josh Knowles, won a Junior Olympic gold medal at this season’s first match. The team competes in a postal league — scores shot during practice are mailed to the Pine Tree Rifle and Pistol Association which tabulates all the scores at the end of the year — and has won a couple of championships in the past three years. The team as a whole has been ranked in the top 10 nationally by the NRA.
“We have had a good team,” Knowles says. “For these kids to compete as well as they have, they do a good job.”
MCI recently spent $8,000 to add steel plates to the wall and ceiling along the shooting range. It is another sign that the school is as committed to the sport as the students are, and that the program is in good shape to continue for the next 30 years, Knowles said.
Still, there will always be those who, upon first learning that the rifle team exists, react with amazement. Knowles ran into one such parent one weekend a few years ago when a mother was entering the building for her daughter’s ballet session as students were lugging in gun cases. The memory of the exchange still makes Knowles chuckle.
“She said, ‘Only in Maine could there be a rifle team downstairs and a ballet upstairs.’ “

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !