So today marks the ending of the 2011 USAMU Action Shooting Junior Clinic!  Another successful year,  with all of the junior shooters leaving with more knowledge and better skills than what they showed up with.

Every year since 2008 the USAMU Action Shooting Team has hosted a Junior shooters clinic, where we get young shooters from across the country to come to Ft. Benning and learn from the USAMU Action Shooting Team.  It is also a big recruiting tool that we use to potentially hire new shooters to the team.  I was hired out of the 2008 Junior Clinic and PFC Sweeney was hired out of the 2010 Junior Clinic.  The clinic is 3 days long starting on friday with the basics, then moving to more advanced shooting techniques on saturday.  On sunday we set up a small match and incorporate all of the techniques that we have studied and learned the past few days to do a check on learning with all of the students.  At the end of that, we all enjoy a delicious lunch and discuss everything we have learned and then call it a day and go home.

Friday started us out with a great group of young shooters.  We didnt have as many shooters as previous years but the ones that did show up were very eager to learn!  It was much easier for them, because they were allowed to get more one on one time with the instructors and ask us about the small problems they are running into that don't get covered with a big group of people.  As always we began Friday with the basic fundamentals, grip, stance, sight picture, and trigger control.  All of the students started off by shooting groups, really focusing on their accuracy and all of the basic fundamentals.  With it being a smaller group, we were able to identify and correct more problems with the young shooters than previous years.  We then moved on into slightly more advanced drills covering the reload, transitions, and the basics of shooting a rifle.  All of the students picked up on new techniques throughout every class and were very happy with the ending results of day 1!

Saturday was even better for the students.  We started off with a refresher of the day before, going back over all of the basic fundamentals.  The students were able to learn about leaving and entering positions, shooting on the move, and shooting the rifle off of a barricade.  At the end of the day,  we put together some very small stages to put what we had learned to the test.  All of the students were very successful in retaining the knowledge they had learned that day.  With the instructor to student ratio being smaller,  the students were really able to pick our brains and push their skills to new levels. 

Today was the day of the match!  We set up all of the stages the prior day with a variety of different shooting scenarios.  We put in small speed shoots to cover the draw and transitions,  we put in some medium coarses to cover the draw and leaving and entering positions, and then some large field coarses to cover everything we had covered and discussed throughout the camp.  After two solid days of instruction, I was very pleased to see the increased skill level of all of the students.  They were all shooting faster, more accurate, and much smoother on their feet.  Their was a considerable increase in all of their shooting abilities and we were all very pleased to see that.  At the end of today,  the parents grilled up a spectacular lunch and we all chowed down after a long day on the range!  It was sad to see them all go because we really do enjoy working with all of them since they are the future of the sport.  We are already excited for next year so that we can work with them again!  We hope to see all of their faces at our upcoming matches using the skills they learned with us!  Another successful USAMU Action Shooting Junior Clinic in the books!