So this article isn’t political. Like at all, sorry for that click bait title. I did however just compete at a third school which inspired this. It’s more of a telling of a college kid’s climb up the competitive rifle totem pole.

I shot a gun for the very first time in January of 2016. I’ll be honest- I was terrible (I’m still pretty terrible, but nowhere near as such). I was shooting a .22 rifle (for those who don’t know guns that’s like a baby bullet- about 2 cm long and .5 cm in diameter. No real recoil, the gun just jumps up a smidgen if not properly held) at a target that was a good 5-6 inches in diameter (I still have that very first target). I was lucky if they hit- while being supported by a bench to put my elbows on, and shooting at only 50 feet. One year later (though I didn’t shoot May-August or the month of winter break so technically only 7 months later) I’m competing without support, and hitting targets that are only an inch in diameter, and are scored with points that differ only by a quarter of a centimeter. My very first competition I scored a 283 out of 600. So really really terrible. I wasn’t shooting to count as part of the team, so I asked my coach not to put my scores up on the board. I was so embarrassed of them(the rest of the team shoots between 450s-550s). Of course, he didn’t listen to me and put them up anyway. Me being me, I decided that I need to improve by a lot (I’m super competitive). My last match I scored a 405. This improvement over the course of under 2 months (technically 1 month if you don’t count the winter break in which I didn’t shoot at all).

Of course this article isn’t really about my scores, that last portion was just showing how practice makes perfect no matter what. Given my anxiety, that has never been a secret, I’m sure you can guess I’m not the type to just go out for new things, especially when I got off on such a bad start at that particular sport. Even my high level of competitiveness isn’t what made me stick with it. For one thing is really helps with anxiety. I’ve had to learn to control my breathing and to calm down enough to shoot (my anxiety is so bad my hands are constantly trembling). If I shoot a 9-10 or a 0-2 my anxiety spikes again, but even that helps me to control it. Of course there are people who don’t think a person as depressed or anxious as me should ever handle a gun, and in most cases, even I can admit that is true, but guns are always locked up, ammo can’t ever leave the range, plus I’m either shooting air pellets or those baby .22s. So even on my worst days I’m safe from myself and because it’s so safe, the range is probably the best place for me to be because it always puts me in a better mindset and helps get out some of the emotions that put me in that mood in the first place.

The best thing about rifle, and one of the biggest reasons why I stayed though is the people I’ve shot with. I get very easily flustered and embarrassed to the point where I don’t want to go back to a place ever again. No matter how poorly I shoot, the coaches and people on my team have never been anything less than supportive. I’m always getting offers of pointers and other such help (like with positioning or adjusting my gun) from other people on the team. I didn’t really know 3 of the 4 other people on the team before joining (two lived on my floor freshman year but only talked to one on the daily) and so you know that whole anxiety and OCD thing putting bad thoughts in my head so I really lucked out with the team. Sometimes I still have those anxious thoughts about them not actually wanting me on the team but then they act really supportive of me when I make such improvements and we have some pretty interesting times going on trips to compete, sometimes getting into shenanigans (apparently we can’t go to nice hotels without trying to ride the baggage trolleys). Even the people that are on competing teams are super nice (shout out to Penn State club rifle for accepting me among them when another team decided they didn’t want me in a specific lane between their shooters in a competition that was particularly packed-all lanes taken up). Even when meeting the top shoot for small bore (bullets not pellets like air rifle) she was super nice to me, congratulating me when she found out I was a new shooter and making improvement in my scores. This is someone who is getting nearly perfect scores and was being supportive of me. If I had to pick any sport I’m super grateful I picked rifle. It helps with my mentality, I love my coaches, and my team, also those shooters not on my team.