Colony High adds rifle team

PALMER — When Shawn Arnold started teaching at Colony High two years ago, he was surprised to learn the school didn’t have a rifle team. But with the help of a few volunteers, Arnold is doing something about it, and next year CHS students will have something else to shoot for.

Next fall Colony will once again have a varsity rifle program, said Arnold, who will coach the team with the help of CHS activities secretary Priscilla Knapp.

“We’re slowly putting everything together,” Arnold said on Monday.

Arnold said the coaching staff, which also includes Kevin Guinn, has been busy doing what needs to be done to resurrect a program that has been nonexistent for several years. The program will be officially recognized as a club sport and will not be funded by the Mat-Su Borough School District, so fund-raising has been key.

The rifle team is hosting steak feed on Friday at CHS. Proceeds raised from that event and other donations will go toward the purchase of the precision air rifles needed to compete. Arnold said he hopes to have at least 12 before the Knights begin the season next fall.

The sport of rifle typically is separated into two parts, air rifle and smallbore, but Arnold said the Knights will start with just air rifle. In past years, when local high schools fielded rifle teams, the squads would shoot at the Matanuska Valley Sportsmen Indoor Shooting range, located outside of Palmer. Arnold said scheduling conflicts will prevent the Knights from shooting at the indoor range, at least for the near future.

The shooting range does its scheduling in two-year blocks, Arnold said, and the only time slots available to the Knights wouldn’t work for high school students.

“Either 11 p.m. on weekdays or 5 a.m. on weekends,” Arnold said.

That eliminates any hope of shooting smallbore — which requires a .22 caliber rifle — but the Knights can practice and compete in air rifle competitions on school grounds, Arnold said. The air rifles shoot a small lead-tipped pellet. During practice, Arnold said the Knights will shoot a pellet made of basically plastic.

The Knights will take every precaution necessary when shooting indoors, Arnold said.

Arnold said he’s excited about the response the new program is getting from the student body. Arnold estimates between 30 and 40 students have expressed interest, and he’s hoping to have about 20 on the 2010-11 team.

During competitions, the team will be made up of three four-person squads. The Colony A, B and C teams will shoot in the three positions — standing, kneeling and prone.

The Knights will be considered an independent team to start, but Arnold hopes Colony can join a conference in the near future. Colony will be the lone program in the Valley. Other rifle teams in the state are in the Anchorage and Fairbanks areas. Arnold said he hopes his team can travel to competitions, but that will be determined by how much money is raised.

Contact Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com.