LEXINGTON, Va. Oct. 29, 2024 — The firing range is cold and dim, except for the lit-up lanes where you fire. Half a dozen cadets are gathering their equipment and setting up their targets. During a practice, they’re shooting air pistols at the range on North Post. 

The Pistol Club at Virginia Military Institute shoots Olympic style, which can consist of three disciplines: rifle, pistol, and shotgun. The club uses air pistol and .22 pistol in a shooting range, where participants aim at targets. They utilize three different shooting methods: air pistol, sport pistol, and standard pistol. Every Tuesday and Thursday, the club, made up of about a dozen cadets both male and female, will meet up at the range either at North Post or Kilbourne Hall. 

Everyone unlocks their guns and ammunition, and targets are assembled. During practice, they use a large sheet of paper with four small targets on it. It’s stapled onto a wood panel and set up at the end of the range.   

"We'll start with slow fire, so it's about five minutes for 10 shots and we just try and focus on groupings and getting kind of into a rhythm at the beginning of the night,” said Chris Olsen ’25, the cadet in charge for the club.  

The club is not a sanctioned NCAA sport, but they do compete nationally. The competitions consist of 60 shots fired in three different shooting disciplines: air pistol, sport pistol, and standard pistol, for a total of 180 shots fired. 

Earlier this year, the club competed in the National Collegiate Pistol Championship held at Fort Moore (formerly Fort Benning) Army post near Columbus, Georgia, in late March. The VMI contingent consisted of a team of four shooters: Olsen, Parker Hall ’24, Jacob Cook ’26, and Kate Patrick ’27, with Jamie Palacio ’27 competing as an individual. The club held a national rank of 11th place going into the competition. With 15 schools at the championship, VMI came in 10th place for air pistol, 8th place for sport pistol, and 10th place for standard pistol. The team finished the competition in 10th place, improving their national ranking. 

This was on the heels of the club’s attendance of the Scholastic Action Shooting Program Intercollegiate Pistols Nationals — the first time in club’s history — in 2023. 

They try to do six to eight matches a year, with stops at the Naval Academy and The Citadel. 

The club is run by cadets, specifically with Olsen in charge with an assistant cadet in charge, usually a 2nd Class cadet. This year, it’s Cook. The club also has a set of coaches — head coach Reese McCormick, assistant coach Norman Claytor, Master Seargeant Robert Coleman, and Jan Downs — that help guide the cadets. 

Olsen said you can join the club without any experience. They’ll teach you how to properly shoot. He said the club atmosphere allows for a more relaxed environment. 

“It's a competitive but relaxed environment because I'm not directly competing against anybody else in a way. I'm competing against myself every time, because I'm just trying to get that one extra point that I didn't get last time. It creates a healthy kind of competition,” he said. 

Olsen had always been interested in precision shooting. 

“I grew up in a little bit of a rural area, and my buddy had a farm,” he said. "It was just one of those things where after school for fun, you just take a bunch of shotguns or a couple rifles out and just go shoot at random things.”

The club has been on and off since the 1970s. Olsen joined as a rat and said clubs at VMI serve as a break in cadet life. 

“I think they're extremely important because it acts as an outlet for the regular cadet, who might not be involved in other things,” he said. “Clubs are the last area where cadets can be involved and have a leadership experience at a leadership school, but also build their own little community and find their own little group.” 

Laura Peters Shapiro
Photos by Kelly Nye
Communications & Marketing
VIRGINIA MILITARY INSTITUTE