“The strength of their spirit that they carry, the quiet [and] calm confidence is pretty jaw dropping to see, especially those that have national championships.”
BUDA — In a world filled with conventional sports, like football or basketball, and even those a little more unique, such competitive cheer, the definition exceeds expectations for the Marine Corps Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (MCJROTC) program at Jack C. Hays High School.
The school’s MJROTC Three Position Air Rifle Team was named the 2025 All Service JROTC National Champions — the highest title in the sport, with a competitive field of just over 1,500 teams and 6,000 athletes — after competing against the "best of the best" in Camp Perry, Ohio, March 20-22. The students, who make up the Hays Red Team and won the school the sporter team championship, were Sophia Padilla, Gabriel Guerrero, Shiloh Hargrove and Viviana Martinez. In the sporter individual championship, two students were in the top 10, as Sophia Padilla secured seventh place and Gabriel Guerrero won ninth place.
The accolades do not stop there. Prior to that, the team competed in the JROTC Service Championships in Anniston, Albama, Feb. 13-15, where Jack C. Hays secured the win in the U.S. Marine Corps Overall Sporter Teams division. The Hays Red Team shot the highest two-day score in program history and won the event; Hargrove was named the 2025 individual champion, Guerrero came in fourth place and Sophia Padilla was in sixth.
Additionally, the Hays Blue Team — Isabella Johnson, Adah Guerra, Blake Willingham and Zoe Quiles — finished in eighth place, which is considered to be impressive, as the team consists of only freshmen and sophomores.
Behind the mark
The team does a form of the Olympic sport called air rifle marksmanship, where it competes in three different shooting positions — kneeling, prone and standing — using air rifles at targets 10 meters away.
According to the Civilian Marksmanship Program, riflery is a popular high school sport, as several teams participate regularly in leagues, regional competitions and state championships in many parts of the country. However, unlike other high school sports, there are no freshmen-only, junior varsity or varsity teams in MCJROTC Marksmanship, explained Jack C. Hays coach Lt. Col. Donald Wimp, who is in his 12th year of his tenure as the coach.
“It’s literally 18-and-a-half-year-olds and younger; they’ll let people even all the way through middle school compete and they compete evenly against each other. So, if you have a kid that shoots at a national level, that you’ve developed them quickly, which we’ve had, they might, as a freshman, be shooting and defeating 18-year-old seniors that are graduating,” he said.
“Three position air rifle, to do it very, very well, it's more like a meditation or yoga than it is a competition … It’s more meditation than it is competition because you're literally slowing your heart rate down. You're getting into a structural position with excellent support and you're relaxing deep into the shot before you execute the shot. You're only taking a shot every 45 seconds to a minute and then, you're doing this deep breathing, settling into the position and it's very technical,” Wimp explained. “[The target is] 33 feet away. They don't have magnified scopes or anything. It's just a ring that they look through and on a site that has a ring. And to get a 10 at 33 feet, if I were to take pen and I were to put a dot on a white piece of paper, not a circle or anything, but literally a dot on that paper, they have to hit that dot to get a 10.”
The sport itself is 95% mental, so all of what the students learn — focus, concentration, compartmentalization, maturity and spiritual strength — and carry out is “unsurpassed,” explained Wimp. They will bring those qualities into whatever they do post-high school, whether that be college, job interviews or any path they choose: “The strength of their spirit that they carry, the quiet [and] calm confidence is pretty jaw dropping to see, especially those that have national championships,” he said.
The dedication that the students put in is evident, as they show up at practice four to five days a week, nine months out of the year, at 7 a.m., start shooting at 7:30 a.m. and then, finish around 8:40 a.m. Dena Guerrero, the mother of Gabriel Guerrero, shared that she has been proud watching the hard work and dedication that the students put into the sport.
“My son, he’s set goals and he has ADHD and the sport has helped him with that. One of his goals was winning the national competition and I’m very proud, as a parent, to see all of his hard work and putting all this time [in],” Dena Guerrero said. “All the coaching that the colonel has given and his guidance has brought him all along this way to actually do that as a junior.”
Gabriel Guerrero had been interested in marksmanship since he earned my Shotgun Shooting Merit Badge at 9 years old at a Boy Scouts camp. Later, he wanted to join JROTC at Hays High School after learning they had a marksmanship team and, even though it’s challenging to secure a spot, he made the team as a freshman.
After graduating high school, he is going to attend Texas A&M University to enter the Corps of Cadets program, but his ultimate goal is to become a Marine Corps officer.
Another parent, Cristina Padilla, said that she has been super proud to watch the team’s progress as her daughter, Sophia Padilla, who is now a junior, was the only freshman on the red team that competed two years ago. She added that she has enjoyed seeing her daughter go from not ever have picked up a gun to participating in a high-level competition.
Sophia Padilla is considering multiple avenues after high school; she wants to become an environmental engineer and she has always had a passion for acting, so she is keeping her options open, her mother said.
Looking ahead
MCJROTC is not considered to be a high school sport; therefore, it does not receive any athletic funding, rather the team gets it from headquarters and through fundraising efforts, Wimp said, all for the parents to not have to pay anything for their student to participate in the sport.
“It is cost intensive, so we do a lot of fundraising on our level, but it’s not well-known,” Wimp said.
While the sport may not be well-known everywhere, the Jack C. Hays team is recognized when the students travel for competitions.
“They are known because their name is Jack C. Hays. They're known before they enter the venue … because we put the time in and we are now consistently the top national team, or certainly one of the top few, year in and year out, that is powerful when they walk in and you have coaches and other shooters, they're top shooters, and they come up and they're like, ‘You guys are so good,’” Wimp shared.
Now, the Jack C. Hays MJROTC Three Position Air Rifle Team will be heading back to Ohio in June for the CMP National Championships, where they will face various teams across the U.S., ranging from 4-H groups, Boy Scouts, private shooting clubs and any youth who qualified and earned a high enough score to go, Dena Guerrero said.
To stay up-to-date on the team, visit bit.ly/43Nvzol. Information on results from recent competitions can be found at www.ct.thecmp.org/app/v1/index.php.
