Burlington Rifle & Pistol Club Junior Competition Team Colchester, Vermont USA
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Burlington Rifle & Pistol Club Junior Competition Team Colchester, Vermont USA
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Reprinted by permission from: The Barre Times Argus More Than Meets the EyeThe sport of rifle shooting proves to be an equal opportunity competition By KRISTIN FLETCHER January 30,2000 Not knowing exactly what a national champion rifle shooter looked like, I headed to Norwich University last week with my mind open to extreme possibilities. What I knew about my interviewee, Emily Caruso, was her impressive track record - she won the individual air rifle championship as a sophomore in 1998 with a score of 393 out of a possible 400 points and was an All-American the past two years. What I knew about the sport of rifle was even less. An article spoke of it as a gender-neutral activity that requires a good eye rather than a specific body type. The National Rifle Association's web site boasted "air gun programs have been adopted by many national organizations, including the National Wheelchair Athletic Association, National Association of Sports for Cerebral Palsy, U.S. Jaycees, Boy Scouts of America" and so on. Equal opportunity for all sizes and shapes. Men and women competing side by side. I got the picture. And still I was surprised to meet Caruso. At a petite 5-foot-2, even in her heavy canvas shooting pants and a red bandana tied around her head, Caruso looked about as menacing as a wisp of smoke. Caruso, a senior from Fairfield, Conn., is majoring in psychology with a minor in education. After we sank into an old mustard-colored leather couch in a small room adjacent to Norwich's shooting range, she called to her coach who was chatting with a few of her teammates not more than 10 feet away. Caruso's tiny voice, which is as soft as it is high, didn't quite make it that far and it took a friendly nudge to let Mike Hourigan know his attention was requested. Here was living proof of the sport's claims. But while the sport does not discriminate, reaching the upper echelon takes as much discipline, patience, precision and endurance as it does for any other sport. "It takes an enormous amount of dedication," Hourigan said. "Emily's been to a lot of places to give (her) the match ability to stand up and do it when it counts." Norwich's rifle team is lucky enough to have two returning All-Americans in Caruso and senior David Held, and is the only team on campus that competes against Division I schools. The Cadets hosted last year's national championship and finished fifth out of 10 teams. They shoot in the Mid-Atlantic Rifle Conference, which is composed of 29 colleges and universities in the Northeast. Part of the sport's difficulty is adjusting to the conditions at each range - as if holding an 11-pound rifle for the duration of a six-hour match was not challenging enough. What they are all aiming for is a series of bull's-eyes 1-3/4 inches in diameter with scoring arranged in descending order. For air rifle - a .177-caliber rifle is standard - the target is 10 meters (33-1/2 feet) away and in smallbore, which uses .22s, it is 50 feet away. Hourigan described the center as the size of a dot made by a fine-point marker. Putting a shot inside the nine ring (2 mm across) is 10 points and completely wiping out the center is used as a tiebreaker. In 1998, Caruso was within the center 30 times in 40 tries from 10 meters away to earn her national title. Caruso began shooting in fifth grade with her older sister in a junior program sponsored by the town police athletic league. "I guess I was pretty good for Connecticut," she said. "I had really good coaches when I was young, too, and they kind of supported me and showed me I had potential." Vermont has similar junior programs in Northfield and Burlington. Dick Morrison, head coach at the Burlington Rifle and Pistol Club in Colchester, said the club produced 10 national champions last year. Morrison helped revive the club five years ago and has recruited parents to assist him in practices and competitions. "We have more kids coming to us than we can handle," Morrison said. Many find out about the club through word of mouth, he said, and "many parents want their kids to learn to shoot. "It's a good program for kids because they can get scholarships for college. It's an individual sport. It develops determination, drive and dedication." The club currently has 25 members, over half of them girls, and Morrison said females have an inborn advantage when it comes to the proper stance. "A girl is a better shooter than a boy, anatomically," Morrison said. "They have a better hip for the off-hand. Given equal work, the girl will be a better shooter." Like sports such as golf and cycling, excelling at rifle is dependent to a certain extent on the quality of the equipment. Other than the rifle, competitors wear a functional uniform of heavy cloth or leather pants and coat, along with flat-bottom shoes, to help support them in the shooting position. Other necessary equipment includes an off-hand stand to rest the gun on between shots and to hold the ammunition, a sling for the prone and kneeling positions, a scope, and a glove. At the high end, which is where Caruso is shopping from these days, rifles alone cost in the $2,000 range. Caruso often shoots against students who have recouped some of those losses through scholarships to Division I schools. She considered attending the University of Alaska like her sister, who competed on that team her freshman year, but decided it was too far from home. The four-hour distance between Northfield and Fairfield is more to her liking, but she is prepared to go much farther to continue competing after graduation. "I would like to go as far as I can," she said. "If that's the Olympics, that's great. If I have the opportunity I'd like to go to Colorado to train. In the past I've been on the national development team. I would like to be on the national team." Judging from one experience Caruso related, she takes at least
a little pleasure in the element of surprise she presents. After checking
in her rifles to fly down to Georgia for a national invitational, the ticket
claims agent told her she was the last person he expected to see picking up a
rifle case. She doesn't hunt. She's a vegetarian. She played with Barbies
as a kid, not G.I. Joe. She hopes to teach kindergarten one day. She's a great
shot. "People all the time assume men are better than women (at rifle),"
Caruso said. "When anyone could win."
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