The Best Investment We Make
There is a particular sound at a range when a junior knocks over their first steel target. It is not the ring of the plate. It is what happens immediately afterwards, the whole line stopping what it is doing and making a fuss, because everybody there remembers being that kid.
If you want to know what SSAA NSW is really for, that moment is a good place to start.
MORE ON OFFER THAN MOST PEOPLE REALISE
Juniors are not an afterthought in SSAA NSW. They are built into the structure of the sport.
Most of our disciplines include events or components specifically for junior members, and there is a dedicated Junior Sports Shooting discipline in its own right. Nationally, there are junior championships, including postal competitions, where a young shooter competes against juniors right across the country while shooting on their own home range with their own branch’s range officers watching over them. For a younger person, that is a genuinely exciting proposition, national-level competition without a plane ticket.
Alongside it, SSAA National produces The Junior Shooter, a publication written specifically for our younger members. It runs stories, safety material, plain explanations of what the law requires, competitions to enter, and, this is the detail I like most, recipes.
There is also an academic bursary program run nationally, worth a look for members and families with someone in study.
Very few sports in this country offer a young person that much structure at that age.
WHY THIS SPORT SUITS YOUNG PEOPLE SO WELL
I have made the point before that shooting is one of the most egalitarian sports going, and nowhere is that clearer than with juniors.
A young person does not need size, reach, speed or a growth spurt to be competitive here. They need attention, patience and consistency and if they have those, they can and regularly do beat adults with forty years on them. Most sports make teenagers wait their turn. This one does not.
What they take away goes well beyond the range. The habit of doing something carefully, the same way, every time. The ability to sit still and concentrate for an hour, which is becoming a genuinely rare skill and a serious, early lesson in responsibility, delivered in a setting where the reasons for it are obvious rather than theoretical.
Parents notice it. I have lost count of the number who have told me the shooting was the first thing their child stuck at.
SPONSOR ONE
Here is a small idea with a large effect.
You can sponsor a junior membership. It costs very little, and for a family who might not otherwise stretch to it, it can be the difference between a young person joining the sport and never trying it at all. It is one of the more useful things a member can do to promote the future of the sport.
WHAT BRANCHES CAN DO |
WHAT THE REST OF US CAN DO |
| The branches that do well with juniors tend to do a few simple things.
They have club firearms available so a young person can start before a family commits to buying anything. They run a junior session at the same time every week, so parents can plan around it. They give juniors a real job on the day; scoring, setting targets, working the sign-in desk, so a young person sees how the whole sport fits together rather than just the firing line. And they resist the temptation to over-coach. The fastest way to lose a young person is to correct their fourth shot before they have finished enjoying their third. |
For those of us who are not coaches and never will be, the contribution is simpler. Bring one. Make room on the line. Answer their questions properly and invest some time. Let them see what a good adult does with a firearm, because that image will sit with them for the rest of their life. And when they knock the plate over, make a fuss. |
FINALLY
I have been in this sport a long time, and in various leadership roles across it. The thing I am most confident about is this; the health of our Association in 2050 is being determined right now, on Saturday mornings or whenever your range is open, by whether the juniors turning up today feel welcome.
Everything else we do, the governance, the training, the facilities, the representation exists to make sure there is something worth handing over. The handing over is the actual job.
If your branch is running junior programs and doing them well, I would like to hear about it, and I would like other branches to hear about it too. Write to me at jai.rowell@nsw.ssaa.org.au.
Until next week: keep ’em on target, in the field and on the range!
Jai Rowell
President — SSAA NSW
WHAT YOU TELL ME MATTERS MOST – ASK THE PRESIDENT
Every week I hear from members and branches, by phone, by email, and standing around at ranges. If you ask me what the most important part of this job is, that is it. Listening to members. Everything else follows from it.
So, I want to open up another avenue. If you have a burning question about SSAA NSW, your membership, your discipline, or where we are heading, send it through to me at jai.rowell@nsw.ssaa.org.au. Each week I will publish a selection of the questions I receive and answer them here, straight, in this column.
No question is too basic and none of them are off limits. If you are wondering about it, chances are a few thousand other members are wondering the same thing
ABOUT THIS COLUMN
Each week I pull up a seat at the bench to talk about what’s happening across SSAA NSW, the wins, the setbacks, what’s on the political radar, and my thoughts on whatever is front of mind, from the matters members are raising with me to whatever is shaping the sport that week. I’ll put our volunteers where they belong, at the front, because they’re the backbone of everything we do, and I’ll back the industry that keeps our sport strong. The promise is in the name: plain talk, no spin, and I’ll always tell it to you straight.
