About the Juniors--

I asked Larry Saywer to give me a little overlook into the local Jr. teams and shooters. Larry was kind enough to send this along.

" There are three or four junior clubs in the metro area that are actively competing, plus the two high school teams (Cretin-Derham Hall in St. Paul, and St. Thomas Academy, in Mendota Heights. Those two shoot almost exclusively Air Rifle now as they are both JROTC and .22 in JROTC is not allowed.)
Major players are: Minnesota Centershots, my club, which ran as the Mpls. Rifle Club junior program for seven years until we spun it off last year to form an independent organization. We're a 501(c)(3) dedicated to junior shooting.

Gopher Jr. Rifle Club: Joe Showalter's gang. They shoot sporter and precision air rifle, and smallbore, often go to Perry for SB.
Post 435 CMP (in Richfield): Coach is Tim Cagney, they shoot sporter air rifle, SB rifle (.22), a little air pistol, and they have a kid or two shooting precision air rifle. Post 435 also went to Perry last week to represent Minnesota in the Sporter Air Rifle event of the USAS/CMP National J.O. 3-P Air championships. They also stayed and shot in the Air Pistol event.
Also, there is a new club called the Long Rangers, in St. Francis. It is run by some folks from Mtka Game & Fish. All new young kids, they are shooting sporter air rifle and .22. They should grow nicely over time.
The two high school teams shoot sporter air rifle, and St. Thomas has a national-level team. They shoot mostly JROTC-affiliated competitions but also some local open matches. They've ranked quite when they've gone to national competitions.
Hope this helps!"
Larry Sawyer

Thanks, Larry, we appreciate your passing this on to us. I'm sure that there are some out there that would like to help get a young person started in a shooting program.
Note: The Long Rangers Jr. team (Bruce Blahut coach) has its own web site---- http://longrangers.us/Home_Page.php Kids are getting smarter all the time.
Good shooting all at Perry.