finishing up 4H shooting

 As I've mentioned a few times this year, Noah and Evie were both involved in 4H shooting sports spring of 2018. 

In order to help them both improve we actually invested in our own gun this year. It seemed like they were both having a difficult time with their accuracy and consistency so I was hoping this would help. Maybe it did, I'm not sure. It took nearly two months to arrive so that did not help...

 It was funny how Abigail and Evie shot with their opposite eyes. Abigail was right handed and shot with her left eye. Evie is left handed and shot with her right eye. Therefore when they sat next to each other, they were always facing opposite ways like below. Or maybe Evie just liked to lean on Abigail for support... 😂

Evie had a coupe fluke nights where she shot 250 and qualified for State like it was nothing. But just like when Noah was a beginner, it's easier to shoot those scores than now that he's intermediate. Noah was having a very difficult year getting his scores up to 300 so he could qualify for State (and next year is 325!). The harder he tried and the more he practiced, the worse he seemed to do. He's such a head case, just like his dad. Terry used to get very nervous before performing for track meets and I think Noah is the same way. He did much better if he just tried to relax, have fun, and not let himself get disappointed. One night later in the season he did finally qualify for State. That's Alicia the coach counting his targets. Unfortunately, just like last year, they ran out of space and we couldn't go to State. We were busy that weekend anyway, but it was a bummer. Noah handled it pretty well though. 

Towards the end of the season Noah and Evie participated in a weekend shootout. It was April 7th. It was fun, especially since it was so empty in their later time slot. They both shot okay. Here are all four positions they learned, beginning with Prone.

This is Standing, which is the hardest, but somehow Noah occasionally shot very well at. 

Sitting was usually Noah's best position. 

And Kneeling. Evie was a mixed bag of scores.

On the second to last night, since all our kids were on the end of the line I took some pictures of everyone. Smiley Evie 😁 

Time to shoot. They had a consistently large number of shooters every week.  

The final night a week into May was a pizza party and fun night of shooting targets with animal crackers or sideways cards or miniature animals. This year was a struggle for me to get through for some reason. Perhaps because Noah had such a hard time, I don't know. And I'm not sure if we'll do it again next year. I really really want to get Noah into Cross Country in the fall. We'll see about Track after that... But it was definitely fun to do something with friends. And a good lesson for disappointment and determination.