Burnet County 4-H Youth Rifle Team aims for accuracy and life success

When the Burnet County 4-H Youth Rifle Team trains, it’s about more than hitting a target.

“Our team is not about making marksmen,” 4-H shooting coach Guy Taylor said. “It’s about developing kids.”

Taylor refers to his team members as athletes rather than shooters or marksmen. 

“We’re no different than an athlete running track or an athlete playing football,” he continued. “We’re athletes, also. We take our body and our mind, and we perform a function.”

Over the years, the Burnet 4-H team has traveled across the country to compete in its sport.

“We’ve been to New Mexico, Colorado Springs, Alabama, Georgia, all over Texas, Idaho, Ohio, Illinois, even Spain,” Taylor said. “We tried to add it up and lost count.”

Taylor believes what makes his program unique, however, is its de-emphasis on tournament success. Instead, the coach highlights learning life lessons.

“We focus on what we call ‘healthy competition,’” he said. “That is doing your best and striving to be your best. You win? Great. You lose? Great. You need to learn how to lose, too.”

The young athletes range in age from 8-16. 

“We develop kids through athletics and leadership and teaching them responsibility,” he said. “I could go through a whole list of social skills we teach our kids. Being able to shoot is the tool that we use.”

Their outside projects double down on Taylor’s mission to cultivate full-functioning, hardworking adults. This past summer, the team converted an old church building into an air-rifle range. 

“They have to learn there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” Taylor said. “It’s basic economics. Everything they get in our program, they have to earn it.”

After ripping up the church’s worn carpets, installing new toilets in the bathrooms, and building a false wall to back the main shooting gallery, the range was deemed complete enough for the team to finally get some target practice in their new space.

“They had a blast in the restroom putting those commodes together and putting them in,” Taylor said. “I think I had a record number of potty jokes that day from the boys.”

On the firing range, the team takes up their air rifles to train for competition in four categories: three-position smallbore (prone, kneeling, standing); prone smallbore; three-position air rifle; and international air rifle (60 rounds, standing). The expensive firearms are pumped with 3,000 pounds of pure air from scuba equipment to give pellets sprung from the gun the correct velocity to strike targets 10 meters away. 

Beginners on the team typically start in a prone position. Intermediate shooters move up into a kneel. The most advanced members shoot fully standing with the rifle balanced on their shoulder.

Staying calm is imperative, said 13-year-old Samuel Kaspar of Marble Falls.

“I’ve been getting more patient, and it’s helped me focus more and take my time on things,” he said.

His 10-year-old brother, Evan Kaspar, agreed.

“You have to be patient, calm, have a good attitude, and be confident in yourself,” he said.

Another trick to harness your inner Annie Oakley is to make sure your feet are even with your shoulders when setting up your shot. Controlling your breath is also key.

“You have to be still when you’re aiming,” said 10-year-old Adler Stanley of Marble Falls.

Safety measures include honoring the sanctity of the pink no-crossing line when rifles are live and stuffing the entire chamber of a rifle with weed-eater wire when not in use. These and other practices make the sport safer than almost any other, according to Taylor.

“Those kids playing on Friday night football or basketball are in a lot more danger of getting hurt than we are, if you look at the statistics,” he said.

One of the team’s most accomplished shooters is Adler’s brother, 16-year-old Weiss Stanley, who has been making his mark since he was 8 years old.

“For me, shooting is like meditation with guns,” Weiss said.

Over the years, Weiss has competed in matches in Ohio, Colorado, and Georgia. He is currently weighing whether or not to continue the sport in college.

“That’s certainly a possibility,” he said. “I’m doing well enough in the national matches, so it’s certainly something that I’m going to consider and certainly have the potential to do.”

Taylor, who has decades of participating in shooting competitions, started teaching the sport in Burnet in 1999. 

“The way it started was because my daughters were in 4-H,” he said. “They noticed that shooting sports was on the project list. Well, I’d been in shooting sports all of my life. They said, ‘Hey, Daddy, you’d be good at this!’ We looked at it and saw that rifling was one of the projects. Before too long, I told (the Burnet County 4-H agent) I’d go to coaching school and coordinate this for the whole county.”

Weiss said Taylor’s experience is invaluable to the team’s success.

“He helps a lot,” he said. “That’s the useful part about having coaches like him. It certainly helps to have someone to put you in the best position.”

Taylor has outlawed the use of the word “weapon” when describing the rifles used by team members.

“Weapon is a dirty word to us,” he said. “When somebody says weapon, it’s like, ‘Uh-uh, you said the ‘W’ word.’ A weapon is what somebody uses to kill somebody. We use rifles. We use firearms.”

Taylor’s approach seems to work.

“Our kids have over 21 national records through the NRA,” he said. “We’re not talking about kiddie records, either. We’re talking about big, national records. We’ve got about five or six national championships, two 4-H championships, and about six state championships. We also got a medal in the world championship in Spain.”

A graduate of the team, Katie Bridges won a bronze medal in 2014 at the 51st International Shooting Sport Federation’s World Championship in Spain. She was a member of the Texas Christian University women’s rifle team at the time. She honed her skills traveling with the Burnet County 4-H team.

Now that’s a target to aim for.

nathan@thepicayune.com