It’s official. I’m now a precision shooter’s father. My son Logan competed last week in the Junior Olympics National Championship. If he wasn’t already hooked on air rifle shooting, he certainly is now.
He qualified for Junior Olympics by being the Wyoming Men’s State Champion for his age group, but truth be told, there weren’t a lot of other kids he was competing against. He actually had the second-to-lowest score of all the qualifiers going in. He knew he would be competing against kids who were turning in much higher scores than he’d ever achieved, but that didn’t discourage him. To be fair, he’s shooting a rifle that isn’t customized to him, and he’s using a shooting suit that doesn’t fit him quite right. I’m pretty sure all the other kids there were shooting their own rifles and wearing their own suits, while his equipment all belongs to his shooting club.
Yet he still shot well, and his scores improved at every practice and through the first relay at Junior Olympics. He came close to shooting another personal record on his last relay at nationals, too, but finished just a few points short.
But now he’s hooked. While we were down at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, we got him a new used shooting suit. It actually fits him perfectly, so that’ll help him a lot. And sometime in the next few weeks, we’ll pick up a rifle for him from a friend whose kid doesn’t use it anymore, and we’ll get it adjusted exactly right for him.
So the second phase of being a precision shooter parent has begun – the spending phase. All this equipment is incredibly expensive, even the used stuff. I think I’m going to have to start mowing lawns in my spare time to afford it.
