More than a dozen local students earned recognition on Jan. 11 for their participation on a state and national championship team. The Student Air Rifle program at Jefferson High held its awards banquet to celebrate the winning team and coaches.
Hunter Berry, a U.S. Coast Guard recruiter for most of Missouri and the St. Louis Metro East, wrapped up his first year as the team’s head coach by guiding the champions to a new record score in the state and national competitions Dec. 2.
“We had six shooters post a 1,657 total score to set a new national record,” Berry said. “Last year the record was set with a total of 1,626.”
The competition accumulates the top six scores from a maximum team of 18 shooters. Berry said his team at Jefferson includes 16 members with nearly an equal number of males and females in grades nine through 12. The program’s inclusiveness is one of its strengths.
“We model it a lot (after) the National Archery in Schools Program,” Berry said. “Anybody is welcome in the program, and I truly do mean anybody. As long as a kid is willing to listen, they are able to participate.”
The national air rifle program is open for students in grade four through high school. Jefferson’s team practices in the Danby-Rush Tower Middle School cafeteria and hosted the state and national tournaments in the Kent Kiepe Gymnasium.
“We have talked about growing the program, but for what our facility can handle, we (already) have good numbers,” Berry said. The team practices twice a week and competed in tournaments hosted at the school in September, prior to the state and national championship.
The format of the competitions has students shoot two pellets at each of five targets on a sheet posted 10 meters away. The targets have circles for scoring from six points to the center 10, so a perfect target nets 100 points. With three rounds of shooting, the maximum score per shooter is 300. Jefferson’s six record-setting shooters averaged more than 276 in their national championship performance.
The team is financially supported primarily by a grant from the National Rifle Association that was used to purchase the basic Umarex Embark .177 pellet air rifles and targets. The students help pay for the tin pellets through fundraisers, including a raffle supported by Ducks Unlimited. At $25 per container of 500 pellets, the costs add up.
“With two practices a week, and shooting 60 or 70 pellets per practice, a student can use a tin of 500 in three or four weeks,” Berry said.
The coach said he and his assistants were all required to complete an eight-hour Basic Air Riflery Instructors course and pass a written test. He cited the support of his assistants and their spouses as a big component of the team’s success.
“They held team-building experiences to bring the team together (and) learn to support each other,” Berry said. “That’s a lot more important than shooting a rifle and winning a national championship. They learned to be a part of something bigger than themselves.”
Safety is the top priority of the program. The first week of practice focused exclusively on safely using the rifles that the team took into competition.
“The tournaments have safety protocols that require coaches to manage utilization of the rifles and pellets throughout the competition,” he said. “Line judges have control over when to retrieve and return rifles to ensure the utmost safety.”
In addition to his work at Jefferson, Berry advocates for the program in other schools as he visits them in his full-time recruiting.
“I have the opportunity in my other job to stop by and see the principal or superintendent and ask, ‘Have you heard of this program?’ I highly recommend it to the schools. I’ll talk to anyone who will listen.”
For more information about the Student Air Rifle Program, local school officials can wait for Berry to stop by, or check out the organization’s website at sarprogram.org.
John Winkelman has been writingabout outdoors news and issues in Jefferson County for more than 30 years and is the Associate Editor for Outdoor Guide Magazine. If you have story ideas for the Leader outdoor news page, e-mail ogmjohnw@aol.com, and you can find more outdoor news and updates at johnjwink.com.