On target

PALMER — Last weekend, more than a dozen Colony High School students spent their Saturday morning standing over large sheets of plywood, taking measuring and drawing lines with chalk.

These students were not in wood shop working on a class project. They’re members of the Colony High School rifle team.

“I’ve never seen a more dedicated group of students,” Colony rifle coach Shawn Arnold said of his team, which spent that morning building targets for the squad’s practices. “They’ve done everything I’ve asked them to do.”

After a hiatus, rifle has returned to Colony High. Now Arnold and his athletes are working to build the foundation of the resurrected club. As the Knights move into their first season of competition in several years, the completely self-funded team is doing everything from raising funds to purchase the guns to shoot to building the targets to shoot at.

“They’ve been incredibly patient helping build this team,” Arnold said of the 14 students on his team.

But the Knights are also taking a sense of ownership in the program.

“It’s all us,” Lyle Swallows, the team’s captain, said. “All the money we’ve raised ourselves. This is stuff we’ve built ourselves.”

Swallows said he’s excited to finally have a rifle program at CHS. The junior is also a member of the Colony JROTC and has set a goal of attending the University of Alaska Fairbanks to compete for the school’s national championship rifle program.

“That’s been my dream, to be a part of that sport up there,” Swallows said.

Swallows has some experience shooting competitively through Colony’s JROTC program, but hopes he experience with the Knights rifle team can help him reach his target. Swallows said he wishes this could have happened sooner at Colony.

“I wish I could be one of these freshmen,” Swallows said.

Nathan Barnett is a freshman, and is excited about the prospect of four years with the rifle team. Barnett said he got a taste of competitive shooting while attending a Boy Scouts summer camp three years ago. He was the top shooter in the camp and had the fourth-best score in the nation. Now, Barnett is ready to build upon what he learned with the Boy Scouts.

Barnett said he likes the mental aspect of the sport.

“It teaches you focus,” Barnett said. “When you shoot, you have to focus on one thing. You can’t focus on what’s going around you.”

Of the 14 members of the team, Arnold said at least 10 have some prior experience, mostly in Boys Scouts or JROTC.

Regardless of experience, Arnold said the team has been working on building on the foundations of the sport — asepcts such as breathing technique and trigger control.

The Knights currently practice inside the CHS gymnasium,. The sport is typically separated into two parts — smallbore and air rifle. The Knights have started with air rifle and are looking forward to competing in smallbore, which requires a .22 caliber rifle.

The Colony team was recently approved to begin shooting at the Matanuska Valley Sportsmen Indoor Shooting range, located outside of Palmer, and will be able to use that facility to practice smallbore.

Arnold said a biggest obstacle, so far, has simply been fund-raising. Equipment can cost thousands of dollars. The team has already received a great deal of support and the Knights have been able to acquire equipment to outfit two shooters at once.

The Knights have more fund-raisers on the horizon. Dairy Queen is donating 10 percent of its revenue from all purchases made at its Palmer restaurant Oct. 3 from 1-4 p.m. Arnold said the team is also planning a spaghetti feed.

The Knights are also looked forward to their first competition of the year. Colony will compete in a postal match during the upcoming weeks.

The postal match will put the Knights against teams from the Lower 48. The Knights will shoot at Colony High and mail their targets to the Civilian Marksmanship Program, a governing body for competitive shooting the CMP will score the Knights’ targets against other teams.

Arnold said Colony is also working to schedule live action for his team. There are plans for the Knights to compete against the Delta High School rifle team. Arnold also hopes the Knights can compete against Anchorage-area teams.

Colony currently has the only prep rifle program in the Mat-Su Valley. Arnold said the Knights have dubbed themselves a shooting sports team. The head coach said he would like to see the Knights expand in the future and possibly explore trap and skeet competition.

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