Starkville Gun Club rifle coach Michael East first met John Blanton when Blanton showed up at a 4-H Shooting Sports practice with the wrong kind of gun.
East took a look at the big, long, break-barrel gun the teenager toted and offered to let Blanton try out his own air rifle instead. Blanton declined.
“Well,” East eventually said. “Do you want to win?'”
After about 10 seconds, Blanton nodded. He took East’s rifle, aimed it at the target and started shooting.
“From that moment, I knew, ‘Alright, this kid’s got something,'” East said.
Four and a half years later, Blanton, now a senior at Heritage Academy, has fulfilled the promise he showed at that first practice. He has honed his shooting skills, has competed in tournaments all over the U.S. and could have a chance to compete in the Olympics before too long.
On Wednesday morning in the Heritage Academy gym, Blanton took his next step. He signed his letter of intent to compete in rifle shooting at Murray State University.
“He has come a long way from walking into a 4H practice with his break-barrel squirrel gun,” said East, who coaches Blanton with the Starkville Gun Club’s junior rifle team.
Blanton credited East and his other coaches for helping him become the shooter he is today — one worthy of a Division I scholarship and as skilled as any young rifleman in the country.
“I’ve had a lot of help with my coaches and a lot of people I’ve met along the way who have really helped me and gave me a lot of input,” Blanton said. “That’s what really helped me become good enough to be on a college team.”
After signing Wednesday, Blanton donned a blue and yellow Racers hat and posed for pictures in front of his Feinwerkbau 800 rifle, a gun very much different from the one he brought to that long-ago 4-H practice. He said having the proper equipment made a clear difference in his accuracy.
“Once I was ready, that definitely helped me go to the next step,” Blanton said.
In a typical rifle competition, Blanton explained, shooters have 15 minutes for “sight-ins” — taking as many shots as they want at the targets 10 meters (32.8 feet) away in order to calibrate their guns. They then have an hour and 15 minutes to take just 60 shots that will count toward their final score.
Each target has 10 rings with nine “sub-rings” worth 0.1 point each, making the best possible score on each shot a 10.9. Blanton, for his part, said he’s currently averaging roughly 10.4 points per shot, meaning he’s hitting the center ring nearly every time.
On Jan. 14, Blanton got a letter informing him he’d been named to the National Junior Team for USA Shooting, the sport’s national governing body that selects Olympic athletes.
“That’s definitely something I’m reaching for as a long-term goal,” Blanton said of qualifying for the Olympics. “I do think I have the potential; I just have to get coached to be good enough.”
Only 23 schools sponsor rifle as a Division I sport — including Ohio State, Kentucky and Ole Miss (women’s only) — so Blanton didn’t have a ton of choices on a college destination. He picked Murray State after a visit to the Racers’ campus in Kentucky, taking note of the team’s camaraderie and the morals coach Alan Lollar promoted within the team.
But Blanton has plenty more to achieve before he heads to campus in the fall. Just last week, he competed in the Junior Air Rifle National Championship in Griffin, Georgia; he’ll head to Central America for the El Salvador Junior Grand Prix from March 8-14.
None of that is new for Blanton, who has traveled constantly to further his rifle career. East said he’s shot in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio and Colorado in addition to Mississippi and Georgia.
And while Blanton said he’s wanted to compete at the Division I level since he started shooting rifle, there’s always been something else at the back of his mind that will serve him well at Murray State and wherever he goes next.
“My goal was and has been and still will be to have fun,” Blanton said. “If I’m not having fun, then I wouldn’t really be shooting at a college level.”
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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