Things Are Looking Up

[Subdeacon Joe]

https://triblive.com/news/valley-news-dispatch/despite-guns-and-schools-debate-participation-on-high-school-rifle-teams-is-increasing/?fbclid=IwAR2KBWPm4l1YewsiP7z3z4MBF3ucaTuGuVeUhXVNheax7amBMXipqulLuBQ

 

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The WPIAL requires all of its rifle programs to follow all safety measures at their ranges. Coaches need certification, and Robbins said members of the team are taught full etiquette before even touching a gun.

“It’s the safest sport there is,” Robbins said. “My son is on the team, my youngest son. He got a concussion in football. He’s not getting a concussion shooting rifle. The worst that can happen is he trips and falls in the parking lot.”

That doesn’t mean there’s not push-back. Penn-Trafford keeps rifle as a club program, so Long is an unpaid coach and the students provide their own transportation to practices and competitions.

The school also does not have a team photo on its website because, Long said, three of her competitors are holding rifles.

“We are a rifle team,” she said. “I don’t know exactly how else we would display that. At times it’s a little upsetting and discouraging because out of all the sports in the school, I have no injury report for five years straight.”

Long, an instructor at the Murrysville Gun Club for nearly two decades, extols the virtues of a sport that requires discipline and concentration and where anyone can participate.

Seven of the past 10 WPIAL individual champions are female.

“It’s a sport that’s starting to open up so it can accommodate all kinds of participants,” Long said. “It’s not a sport where you have to be athletically fit to do. You can be tall, skinny, short, fat — it doesn’t matter.

“You can be a boy or a girl. I like that it is a coed sport. Nobody’s singled out.”