Write up of the 2022 Arizona Team trip to Camp Perry

Camp Perry is the Ohio National Guard base on the shore of Lake Eire where the US National Trophy Match shooting competitions have been held pretty much every year since 1907.

The National Matches are open to all. Civilian adults make up the majority of competitors, but there are also military teams and youth teams from all over the country, (and at least one shooter from outside of the country attended this year).

The National Matches are run by CMP (thecmp.org) and include nearly 2 months of smallbore (.22), pistol (.22 & .45), High Power Rifle and Service Rifle (.223 AR-15's mostly, but still a few M1 and M1As), then some vintage rifle matches (M1, 1903, other military rifles modern or obsolete, foreign or US) and last some long range matches. Of these, the service rifle stages are the most traditional and by far the best attended, even with the price of gas and difficulty finding ammo and reloading components, nearly 1000 competitors attended the National Trophy Matches week with service rifle this year! With all the different events over 2 months, I think CMP reported a total of about 3000 competitors!

Service Rifle shooters almost always use an AR-15 with a scope (iron sights, M1A's and M1's are permitted but probably 98% of serious competitors use scoped ARs.) We shoot Standing slow fire and Sitting fire at 200yds and Prone rapid fire at 300 yds and prone Slow Fire at 600 yds (not all matches include all stages) Also one special Rapid fire match described below.

The Arizona Team consisted of 10 juniors and nearly as many adults shooting along with a bunch of junior parents who helped out but did not shoot! The Arizona Junior High Power Rifle Team is named the "Scorpions".

The week of the service rifle matches are the classic, 100+ year old National Trophy matches (with actual perpetual trophies): Junior Shooters arrived a few days early and attend a training clinic put on by the Marine Corps team. Many of us flew out Saturday to attend a squadded practice day on Sunday.

Monday is the President's Match, started by Teddy Roosevelt. a 30 shot individual match, the top 100 shooters (of nearly 1000 this year) get to wear the "President's Hundred" badge, one of the most prestigious honors in rifle shooting, which can only be earned at Camp Perry. The top 20 competitors in the President's Match move to a shoot-off for the winning spot.

Tuesday is the National Trophy Individual or NTI match. This is 50-shots. The NTI is also an Excellence in Competition (EIC) or "Leg" match, if a shooter places in the top 10% of several EIC matches he or she can earn the Distinguished Rifleman Badge (there is a formula to win this award and it takes placing in several IEC matches, sort of like "legs" of a journey, hence the nickname "leg match"). The Distinguished badge is the other prestigious honor a service rifle shooter can earn. (Service pistol has a similar pair of matches and awards). TWO arizonans Ron Z and David G made it to the shoot off of the President's Match, one other former AZ junior team member Kade J was in the President's 100 (again). Three Arizonans Max D, Theo T (both juniors) and Mario C were in the top 10% of the NTI match, a leg of the journey to the distinguished rifleman status.

Wednesday there are separate 2-man team matches, held on separate ranges, a 30-shot for adults called "Hearst Doubles" and a 50-shot for juniors called "Freedom Fire" (those are the names of the trophies). Three of the AZ junior teams were in the top 20.

Thursday is the National Trophy Team Match (NTT), a 6-man 50-shot match. The Scorpions were the 4th place junior team. The Arizona adult team did not have enough shooters and target pullers to field a team in the NTT match this year, a huge disappointment and it means we need to get more adult shooters into this sport!

Each of the above matches are similar to the individual match course of fire, but allow coaching, a big benefit to have the coach watching the wind for changes while the shooter is concentrating on the shot. The team matches also require 2 shooters to shoot the slow fire stages alternating shot for shot, a significantly different dynamic, but it allows the coach to correct the next shooters shot based on that of the previous shooter. CMP National Matches also require every 6-person team to have at least one shooter on the team who has never shot that match at Camp Perry before. This encourages team to cultivate new shooters. If you're reading this and have not shot at Perry.... you might be the shooter we are looking for!

Friday is a completely different team match, The National Trophy Infantry Team match (NTIT) it is a totally different course of fire, all rapid fire starting at 600 yds prone, moving to 500yds prone then 300yds sitting for each subsequent string. Intead of a leasurely 10-shot strings, its a "mag dump" of 25 or more shots fired in less than 1 minute. That is what gives the match its nickname "Rattle Battle". There are other quirks, such as more targets per team than shooters, who have no shooting mats or spotting scopes, only the coaches can have binoculars to try and estimate wind, so strategy of who shoots how many shots at which target and what wind adjustment is used makes this match the most team-oriented match in all the shooting sports.

The Scorpions were the 2nd place junior team and The ASRPA.org sponsored Arizona adult team was the 8th place civilian team.

Full results of all the matches and subcategories are on the CMP website here:
https://ct.thecmp.org/app/v1/index.php?do=match&task=edit&tab=results&match=22780
This is a very long list, find these lines on the CMP results page and click on them:

National President's 100 Rifle Match
National Trophy Individual Rifle Match
National Trophy Junior Team Match
National Hearst Doubles Team Match
National Trophy Rifle Team Match
National Infantry Trophy Team Match

Saturday was the travel home day for most of us. There are few if any more enjoyable ways for a sport shooting enthusiast to spend a week of vacation!

You might be wondering how we each got all our rifles and shooting equipment to Ohio. While there are procedures in place since the 1970's for flying with firearms in checked baggage, it really hard to bring enough gear for a week's shooting with airline weight limits. A few participants drove out in RVs to stay in the camp ground at Camp Perry and hauled the gear for everyone (we all pitched in a for gas). Several of the non-shooting junior team parents (and a few who did shoot) cooked food every night for the entire junior team and most of the adult team. These volunteers did a GREAT JOB making it possible for the rest of us to attend the matches and they really deserve our thanks! A few of the experienced adult shooters, in between shooting their own matches, dedicated a lot of time to coaching the junior team shooters. Not just at Camp Perry but back home at local club matches throughout the year and pretty much every sunday morning in June and July at Ben Avery dedicated team practices ramping up to the trip. They too deserve our thanks for keeping this team and this sport going!

Most matches ended mid afternoon each day, so we had time to prepare equipment for the next day's shooting, get dinner at the Junior team hut and hold a team meeting for planning and if there was still time left, a lot of us went out for Ice Cream at Toft's or Andy's in Port Clinton, OH, the evenings. (well, one guy prefered to get his ice cream from Dollar Tree).

Junior shooters can start as soon as they are large enough to hold the rifle (13 years old is realistic) and "age out" the year they turn 20. Several Arizona Juniors are aging-out this year, we NEED to bring new shooters into the team! We have coaches and equipment and several shooting opportunities to shoot each month in the Phoenix and Tucson areas. If you know a teenager (or are one) who would like to get into this sport and join the team at Camp Perry in 2023 contact me at arizona@rifleshooting.org.

As mentioned above, we NEED more adults on the team and we must have a "new" shooter on every team at Camp Perry just to participate. We mentor and coach new shooters and have loaner equipment available and shoot nearly weekly at the 3 Phoenix area ranges. So if you are an adult who wants to get into the Service Rifle sport and join the team at Camp Perry in 2023 contact me at arizona@rifleshooting.org

Bill Poole
http://arizona-rifleshooting.com/
arizona@rifleshooting.org

scene from the firing line at Camp Perry!

Additionally, beyond the scope of this post, several Arizona Pistol Shooters, mostly from PRGC, travelled to Camp Perry in mid-July for the Pistol stages of the National Matches. This type of Bullseye Pistol shooting consists of shooting .22 or centerfire pistol at 25 or 50 yards one handed, slow fire or 2 different speeds of rapid fire. I'll post more about this sport later.