2004 CMP Junior Rifle Camp Season Starts at Camp Perry - While for most young people in the U.S. summer brings images of baseball leagues, swimming classes, football and soccer camps and a myriad of outdoor adventure camps, summers also bring opportunities for youth to participate in shooting camps. The biggest and most popular shooting camps are the CMP Junior Three-Position Air Rifle Camps that take place in different locations throughout the summer. The first two of six 2004 CMP Junior Camps have now been completed. 

45th Annual Interservice Pistol Championship - The National Guard Marksmanship Training Unit hosted the 45th Annual Interservice Pistol Championship at Camp Robinson, Arkansas on 14-17 June 2004. Staff Sergeant James Henderson, U.S. Army Reserves, shot well throughout the long competition to achieve a new match record of 3536-184X in the Individual Championship Grand Aggregate. The U.S. Army Blue Team was the leading team; they won three of the four team events and the Overall Team Aggregate.

Pennsylvania and Nebraska Teams Win National Guard Junior Championship Titles - The 2004 National Championship took place at Camp Joseph T. Robinson, North Little Rock, Arkansas on 9-12 June.  The National Guard Bureau Junior Air Rifle National Championship is one of the major annual three-position air rifle national championships now available to school-age junior shooters throughout the nation. To compete in the championship, teams must qualify through a postal competition that takes place in the months of January through March; 156 teams and nearly 1,300 individual juniors fired in that phase of the 2004 competition.

Summer Shooting Opportunities for Juniors - For many junior shooters, summer is the time to take a break from shooting. But for many other juniors, summer offers some of the best and most rewarding shooting opportunities of the whole year. Summer can be a time for national championships, junior shooting camps and several national junior invitational competitions. Without the time demands of school work, summer vacation periods offer more time to do extra training and have time to travel to other parts of the country to compete in the most important championships of the whole year. All of these opportunities can combine to raise shooting scores to a higher level and let young shooters experience some of the most enjoyable experiences in shooting.

Camp Perry Improvements - Shooters who come to Camp Perry this summer for the National Matches will see lots of new improvements.  This First Shot On-Line article tells about new Camp Perry roads, rebuilt huts and modules and a new CMP commitment to keep the National Trophy Matches at Camp Perry for many years in the future.

Guns of the National Matches Wins Major Award - The Guns of the National Matches display that was seen by 4,000 competitors during the 2003 Centennial National Matches was recreated for the 2004 NRA Convention.  There the display was not only seen by many of the 61,000 convention visitors, but it won the NRA Gun Collectors Trophy awarded annually to the most outstanding display in the show.

CMP ROTC Scholarship Winners Announced - Each year the CMP cooperates with the Army, Navy and Marine Corps cadet commands to award up to 100 one thousand dollar college scholarships to high school and college students who demonstrate outstanding academic, leadership and rifle marksmanship qualifications.  The complete list of 2004-2005 scholarship winners is published in this edition of The First Shot On-Line. 

JUNIOR DISTINGUISHED SHOOTER NUMBER ONE AWARDS NEW JUNIOR DISTINGUISHED BADGES - When PFC Brandon Green graduated from Bogalusa , Louisiana High School in the spring of 2003, he had become one of the most successful three-position air rifle shooters in the country.  In March 2004, after completing U. S. Army basic and advanced individual training, he reported to Fort Benning as a new member of the U. S. Army Rifle Team.  He arrived at Fort Benning during the 2004 National JROTC Championship where, as the first junior shooter to earn the Junior Distinguished Badge, he was invited present new Junior Distinguished Badges to two of the most recent juniors to go Distinguished.  Click on “More Details” below to read The First Shot story on Brandon Green and the increasingly prestigious Junior Distinguished Badge Program.

West Virginia University Reinstates Rifle Program - In spite of having the most successful college rifle team in the country, the President of West Virginia University decided to cut the rifle team for what was described as budgetary reasons in the spring of 2003.  This decision led to a public outcry among the media and public in the State of West Virginia.  Now, one year later, the West Virginia Legislature and Governor have led an effort to reinstate the WVU Rifle Team.  Click on “More Details” to read The First Shot report on this unprecedented action and current efforts by West Virginia citizens to raise funds to secure the future of this fabled program.