Junior Olympics 2015

I was thinking I should post some pictures from Liam's JO  competition here. We actually went in April, but I haven't had a chance to post about  it.
Junior Olympics  for air rifle is a national  event split into several groups. Men and women compete separately in 10 meter air rifle and .22 events. Liam qualified (in December) for the 60 shot standing air rifle event. Men from 12 to 20 shoot a qualifier, ours was at UAF, from a field of about 1500 the top 200 or so are invited to shoot head to head at the Olympic training  center (OTC) in Colorado Springs.

This is the Olympic Training center range building. A really nice facility, two floors of electronic lanes, I think 35 per floor.

Before competition, you have to sign paperwork, pay fees, and get all of your gear inspected. They use machines to test the thickness and flexibility of jacket and pants. They measure seams and boots, gun sights and adjustable pieces. A lot of rules to follow in this sport. This was taking place in the main gymnasium in the OTC, a separate building from the shooting range. The facility is still open to the public when there are competitions, we saw several tour groups. I wondered if they got a good explanation of all these doings?

This is from day one of competition. The monitor shows the live score for each lane, Liam's target is on the bottom row, second from the left. He is shooting on the lane second from the right.

The men get one practice slot and two competition rounds (60 shots each) The top 10 shoot head to head against each other in front of all the spectators. Liam qualified with a 555 (integer score, out of a possible 600) somewhere in the bottom third. Junior Olympics is scored using the decimal places from each shot as well. They are scored by a computer, for example a perfect bull is scored at a 10.9. Day one he shot a 589.7 for a place of 77, integer score of 567. Day two Liam really paid attention to keeping his routine and focusing on each shot. His score was a 606.3 (integer 581) finishing him in 52nd! 

These are all the interior AK men, two from Delta and six from Fairbanks/North Pole. Pretty good showing for a small program! We all had a good time, some scores better than others and it is a packed few days of range time, meetings, spectating etc. Liam is already looking forward to returning next year :)