One doesn’t have to look far to find an article or TV spot on today’s misguided youth.  The crimes and drugs, as well as declining grades in school make many of us wonder just what the world will be like in the next generation.  What about the shooting sports?  Are we fostering good values in our youth involved in our junior shooting programs here in North Dakota?

I think we are.  I’m going to tell you a true story, just the way it happened.

The Championship was fired over two days with two matches and two finals.  The CMP folks were there doing the stats.  It’s fired on electronic targets only.  The AMU folks run the match and they run it like a Swiss watch.

The day one match was underway and Matt was having trouble.  The zipper fell apart on his recently purchased Kurt Thune shooting pants as he prepared to shoot.  His leg wasn’t supported as it should be, but nothing to do but shoot.  Part way through the match, I noticed he had his hand up.  Two of the AMU range officers stepped up and talked to him.  One came back to me and said that Matt thought he touched off a shot while resting on his offhand stand.  There was no errant shot on anyone else’s target, no one saw it happen, and Matt wasn’t really sure he actually did it, but figured that they better give him a miss.  Sergeant Gray asked me what I thought. "Well, if he thinks he should take a miss, you’d better count it as a miss" I said.

I really didn’t think this was a big deal.  These things happen, just too bad that it had to happen at a National Championship.  There’s another Matt out there in the Olympic Rifle world that has had the same trouble.  If this had happened to Kelsey, Brandon, or Soren, the story would be exactly the same with a different name.

Later on that day, during and after the match, I had several of the AMU Team members tell me how the whole thing with Matt was so unusual.  They said that most shooters they’ve seen, young and old, would have simply loaded up another pellet and kept on shooting.  I found that hard to believe, but that’s what they said.  Matt ended up missing the finals cut and was quite a ways down the list at the end of the day one match.

The next day, a couple of coaches from an opposing team and I worked on Matt’s pants.  With the use of a sporter air rifle screw donated by Scott Pilkington’s gunsmith we got the zipper fixed.  Day two went better for Matt.

The reason they call these things team matches is because that’s exactly what they are.  Kelsey, Brandon, and Soren shot well on day one and held the team up.  Day two all four put out respectable scores and when the "smoke cleared", our team had captured a National Championship.  Remember the coaches that helped me fix Matt’s pants?  Their team took third.  There’s a lesson there as well.

So we donned our suits (Kelsey a formal dress) and we headed to the awards ceremony.  This was an all out lulu of an affair, held in a large ballroom at a convention center.  Everyone was dressed formally with the military in their "class A’s".  We sat at a head table towering over the rest of the room and the other 200 people there.  Retiring AMU Rifle Team member LTC Rob Harbison was the keynote speaker. The Sergeant Major over the entire AMU, SGM Fuller, along with JB Hudson, a former administrative assistant to the Secretary of the Army both attended and spoke.

Sergeant Gray was the master of ceremonies.  After the banquet, he started the evening’s activities.  "I’d like to welcome you all to the Army Marksmanship Air Rifle Championship Awards program" he said. "But before we hear from our speakers and present the awards, I’d like to talk to you about integrity"….. Well, you know who and what he talked about.  Matt, as well as another young man in the sporter rifle match with a similar story.  The AMU puts integrity before winning or losing.

Two nights after returning home from Georgia, I was sitting in my living room when the phone rang.  It was the head rifle coach from West Point, a fellow named Wigger.  He’d received a couple of phone calls about an honest kid.  Wondered what his plans were.

I anguished a bit about writing this article.  I thought about changing the names so we wouldn’t be "tooting our horns".  It wouldn’t have the same meaning though. As I stated before, if this would have involved one of the other team members, nothing in the story would have changed other than the names.  Had it been any of our other junior shooters from across North Dakota, I suspect the story would have been the same.

Would I have helped a kid from an opposing team whose zipper needed fixing?  You bet!  And so would every other coach I’ve ever seen around North Dakota.

As our junior shooters get older and go on in life, many may not continue with the sport.  Life is just that way.  But they will always carry some of the things they learned.  I sincerely hope they continue in the sport for years to come, but if all they take away from it is a sense of fairness and integrity, then it’s been worthwhile.

Good Shooting,

Eric Pueppke,

President

Pictured Left to Right: Brandon Godbout, Kelsey Hansen, Matt Pueppke, and Soren Butler