Sixteen shooters spent their Memorial Day weekend with Project Appleseed at the WCW Shooting Sports range in celebration of the skills and traditions of the American Rifleman. Both days were excellent for shooting with light winds and plenty of sunshine on Sunday. After introducing the fundamental skills we'd be working on throughout the event, shooters were all shooting excellent groups on sighter targets and were ready to move onto more advanced techniques. Returning on Sunday, shooters were ready to put into practice what they had learned the day prior. After a little more practice on non-timed targets, they were much better prepared for the 55 and 65 second rapid-fire stages on the AQT. First time Appleseeder Hallie was on fire all weekend, qualifying on the weekend's second AQT with a 220, and on another target took the event's highscore of 231 out of 250! Carlos, also at his first event, shot a 213. Returning shooters Cameron and Jamison each re-qualified with a 211 and 216 respectively.
During the Parker's Revenge team activity, Parker's Legion showed that they were paying attention to our telling of the Three Strikes of the Match about April 19th, 1775 and handily won the challenge by targeting those shiny gorgets and coming away with 51 points out of 75.
Being Memorial Day weekend, the telling of stories from the American Revolutionary War has even more special meaning for many of us. From that cold morning on Lexington Green on April 19th 1775 to today as we prepare to celebrate 250 years of declared American Independence, please remember all those who came before to make such a celebration possible. Say their names, tell their stories, remember their sacrifices. As John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail in April of 1777, "Posterity! You will never know, how much it cost the present Generation, to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make a good Use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it."