The twins had a ROTC event last night and while waiting for them afterwards I had the opportunity to look into the drill team arms room at their high school.

Leavenworth High has the oldest and one of the largest RO departments in the country with over 400 students involved. ROTC is a real big deal here. They have one of the only public school rifle teams in the country (most others are private military schools) and their own beautiful shooting range down in the basement of the high school. It is an intermural sport here and the kids shoot very fancy Anschutz Olympic grade air rifles provided to them by the Army.

Both twins drill and the boy child is on the Honor Guard with weapons team and they spin Springfield 1903 drill rifles. Just last week the team traveled to Daytona Beach for the National High School Drill finals and while they didn't win made a good showing for themselves.

There were 100s of '03 drill rifles down there! Some nasty flat black spray painted ones that had been dropped on the concrete regularly for 100 years (and had) and some that looked brand new! 100s of them! The racks held 40 to 50 rifles each and there were 6 or 7 of the racks mostly full of Springfields.

I'm told that they are all demilled but there were a bunch of nice ones down there.

Byron