Braden River senior helps JROTC team have a shot at air rifle tournament

Braden River High student Rachel Walmsley has been so busy that she didn’t have time to overthink competing in the JROTC Area 5 Rifle Tournament from Dec. 3-6 at Sarasota Military Academy.

Along with being a dual-enrolled student, Walmsley is also a barista, a member of the school’s choir, a commander for her JROTC Raiders team, a track athlete, and is planning for her future after graduation.

So when she couldn’t squeeze in much time for shooting practice, she didn’t put much pressure on herself to succeed. 

Ironically, those low expectations — and prayers after every shot — helped Walmsley steady her nerves and record a personal-best score.

Her score of 532 was the highest in her region by 13 points, helping the Braden River Rifle Team place second among the 11 teams in its region.

That second-place finish earns Braden River a spot in the state tournament on Jan. 18 at Island Coast High School, in Cape Coral.

For Walmsley, however, that score was especially satisfying because it meant that she had finally bested her older brother.

“Me and my brother Nathan (Walmsley) have always competed against each other,” said Walmsley, who said she had some fun gloating to her brother about beating his personal-best score of 530. “I got competitive out of nowhere, honestly, because I was shooting 509s at practice.”

Photo by Vinnie Portell

Walmsley and her teammates are tasked with shooting at bullseyes smaller than two inches in diameter from 10 meters away in three different positions: standing, kneeling and prone.

There are two sheets of 10 bullseyes per sheet for each position, with 10 points awarded for each bullseye, giving shooters a possibility of maxing out at 600 points.

That means the smallest mistake, from a breath at the wrong moment to a muscle twitch, can be the difference between success and failure.

Team captain A.J. Peters, a senior, knows that well. 

“If you look down the barrel, you can see your heartbeat, like bouncing the barrel up and down,” he said. “So if you don’t shoot at the right moment, you could be off by two or three points just from your heartbeat.”

Photo by Vinnie Portell

Peters was the lone returner to the rifle team this season, which is a big reason why Col. Michael Massmann, the team’s coach, was more focused on building toward the future.

That looked to be a justified plan early on. 

Braden River finished fifth out of seven teams at its first county tournament, which was just about the worst the team had ever done, according to Massmann.

“This year, we focused our tryouts on identifying freshmen and sophomores who were shooting well enough to actually make the team,” Massmann said. “Typically, we’d only take 10 people onto the team, but we took 16.

“We weren’t trying to be as competitive as we typically are with the team.”

However, newcomers like Walmsley and Edgar Monroy-Trejo steadily improved during the year and outperformed expectations.

Walmsley, a senior, plans on becoming involved with Youth on a Mission — a Christian missionary group — after graduation, and also hopes to one day open a coffee shop. 

That means that the upcoming state tournament could be her last time competing for a rifle team.

But that also means it’s one last chance to reaffirm her bragging rights.

“Hopefully I’m going to shoot better than I did (at Area Five) because I always want to improve in some aspect,” she said. “But honestly, I’m just excited because I just want to beat my brother’s score again.”