For the first time since 2015, Battle Ground High School’s marksmanship team with the Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFJROTC) finished first place at a regional tournament held in Sandy, Utah earlier this month.
The Western Regional JROTC Service Championships are a series of matches held annually for Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force JROTC cadets.
Precision marksmanship teams in JROTC programs use Olympic-style rifles with 0.177 caliber pellets on a 10-meter target. The athletes must demonstrate endurance over the course of 90-minute relays across the span of several days. This year’s event included over 320 cadets from 11 states and five service branches.
The Battle Ground High School team is made up of seniors Blake Miller and Sofia Avalos Willis, juniors Rheanne Harpe and Matthew Long, and freshman Fletcher Harpe.
“We really felt like a team this week. (We were) supportive of each other and in an amazing venue,” Rheanne Harpe said. “Plus we had a lot of fun, too.”
Rheanne Harpe is the second ranked JROTC marksmanship shooter in the nation. She also achieved her pilot’s license entering her junior year of high school, according to Lt. Col. Andrew Woodrow, the AFJROTC teacher and adviser at BGHS.
“Getting to spend time with the team and competing against others on a higher level” were Rheanne Harpe’s favorite things about the regional tournament.
The season for Battle Ground High School’s marksmanship team begins in September and comes to a close at the end of March. The team practices shooting twice a week for two hours and once a week for light weight training and aerobics.
“Being one of only two JROTC programs in all of Southwest Washington, the community needs to appreciate how much these students do above and beyond their school,” Woodrow said. “Most of what our program is happens after or before school.”
The team starts at 6:30 in the morning and ends at 5 p.m. on most days, Woodrow said.
“The community involvement with the citizenship we develop in our students is all linked together with the activities we have through flying training, through our simulations, through our different competitions like air rifle,” Woodrow said. “The community needs to understand that we, like many programs in the school, allow a student to practice something that can be carried on as a good citizen of the community.”
The meet was a qualifier for nationals.
Battle Ground’s AFJROTC marksmanship team is now waiting on other regional results to determine if they will get an invitation to the national competition in Ohio next month.
Rheanne Harpe has already qualified as an individual and will head to nationals.
