标题: MIT Shooting Team or Club [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 3-15-2015 09:43 标题: MIT Shooting Team or Club (1) Michael S Rosenwald, Gun Industry’s Helping Hand Triggers a Surge in College Shooting Teams. Washington Post, Mar 15, 2015. www.washingtonpost.com/local/gun ... e63819d2_story.html
Quote:
“MIT’s pistol and rifle teams practice about four times a week underneath a gym. The range seems Paleolithic compared with higher-end establishments with expensive electronic target retrieval systems. Students send and retrieve their targets on a metal wire by winding a hand crank. Shooting booths are separated by window screens.
Students use air guns and standard .22-caliber [‘school-issued’] competition rifles and pistols.
“MIT’s rifle team has varsity status and competes in NCAA-sanctioned matches with funding from the athletic department. The pistol team has club-sport status, meaning it must get its funding elsewhere. For that, it relies heavily on the MidwayUSA Foundation, which sets up an account for each school that alumni or others donate to. The foundation then matches donations and invests the money. Teams can draw 5 percent of their funds each year. The pistol team’s account balance is more than $363,000.
Note:
(a) Shooting “Teams are thriving at a diverse range of schools: Yale, Harvard, the University of Maryland, George Mason University, and even smaller schools such as Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania and Connors State College in Oklahoma.”
Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_Rock_University_of_Pennsylvania
(Established 1889; a member of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education [qv; Penn State U is in the other system]; located in [borough of] Slippery Rock, approximately 52 miles (84 km) north of Pittsburgh)
(b) “They practice squeezing the trigger without any rounds loaded. Then they load up, set their stances”
This “squeeze” (vt) has just its ordinary definition: to press firmly.
(c) Shooting “Team members even adjust their sleep schedules depending on match start times. For the upcoming national tournament, [the pistol team’s captain Thuan] Doan said, ‘We have to get up at 8, which is just obscene.’”
(i) What does it mean? Go to the second last quotation in posting 3 of the series.
(ii) Thuan Doan is a very common Vietnamese name for males. So I am puzzled about this MIT guy. See
Thuan Doan.
Brothers, Phi Kappa Theta, undated
pkt.mit.edu/brothers/2015/TDD/
(Hometown: Torrance, California; Majors: Course 2 - Mechanical Engineering and 6)
* MIT people prides themselves in being numbers guys, so their courses (as well as buildings) are numbered. See Subject Description, MIT Course Catalog 2014-2015.
web.mit.edu/catalog/subjects.html
* I am one of the MIT people, sort of--doing a postdoc for seven months. But I do not show off, firing off numbers.
(iii) obscene (adj): “so excessive as to be offensive <obscene wealth> <obscene waste>” www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obscene 作者: choi 时间: 3-15-2015 09:44
(2) MIT Pistol & Rifle Club
web.mit.edu/mitprc/www/index.html
(Current students of MIT must pay full DAPER athletic facilities privileges, so they need not pay again to access the gun range)
Note:
(a) DAPER = Department of Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation
(b) The Web page of MIT P & R Club emphasizes “this is not the undergrad intercollegiate pistol team, they're over here: MIT Sport Pistol Club.”
That link no longer works. This is the current link: MIT Sport Pistol Team. undated.
pistol.mit.edu
(“If you are a grad student or employee, you may consider joining the MIT Pistol and Rifle Club instead of the Sport Pistol Team, because you will be eligible to shoot in competitions and the membership dues are less expensive. PRC practices on Tuesday nights and goes to local competitions.
(c) Also in this Web page, click “Click here for more information on membership” and you will see a Massachusetts license is required (“You must have a valid Massachusetts Firearms Identification Card (FID) or License to Carry Firearms (LTC). Either can be obtained from your local police station”). 作者: choi 时间: 3-15-2015 09:46
(3) Hiawatha Bray, Straight-A Shooters. Sure, MIT students tend to know their way around Bunsen burners and graphing calculators. Turns out some aren't too shabby with a pistol, either. Boston Globe, Feb 6, 2011. www.boston.com/yourtown/wellesle ... traight_a_shooters/
Quote:
"paper targets hanging 50 feet away.
"in the world of collegiate pistol shooting, MIT ranks among the elite. In 2005 and 2007, the team won the National Rifle Association’s intercollegiate championship, beating out teams from the Coast Guard, the US Military Academy at West Point, and the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. As it turns out, the skills that make a good MIT student are pretty much the same as the ones that make a good pistol shooter. 'You need good focus, concentration skills, self-discipline, attention to detail,' says Will Hart, who coaches the MIT team.
"there are no spectators at all – and the most pervasive noise is the steady drone of a massive ventilation system designed to capture lead particles blasted from the bullets. Ear protectors are mandatory down here, one level below a university basketball court, and they’re quite effective. Tiny as they are, .22 rounds make an awesome crack, but protectors reduce the sound to a gentle pop.
"A perfect score in the “standard pistol” event means hitting the 10 ring [obviously a target has 10 rings, number 10 being the bull's eye], the dead center of the bull’s-eye, 60 times, for a score of 600. It’s never been done in official competition. The world record of 584, set by American Erich Buljung during a match in Caracas, has stood for 28 years.
"All firearms belong to the school; most students are too young to own a pistol legally in Massachusetts. He clipped a 14-inch-square paper target to a pulley system and wheeled it out 10 meters, or a little more than 30 feet [for this reporter, who is apparently a novice].
"A real match [ie, contest] involves shooting 12 groups of five rounds each under increasingly tight time limits – competitors start with a relatively relaxed 2½ minutes, and by the end are squeezing off strings of five shots in 10 seconds. Plus, in standard pistol, the targets must be 25 meters away (about 82 feet), which was more than twice as far away as mine had been.
"Then there’s free pistol, the most demanding of the handgun sports. Shooters use long-barreled pistols that hold just one round, and the distance is set at 50 meters, or about 164 feet. (Since the MIT gun range only stretches 50 feet, the school uses a smaller target to simulate the experience of shooting the longer distance.) It’s like aiming at a golf ball. The shooter loads, takes aim, fires, lowers the gun, does it again, for two hours or 60 rounds fired, whichever comes first. 'Scorewise, it’s the most difficult shooting sport in the Olympics,' says [Will] Hart[, who coaches the (pistol) MIT team].
"In 2007, MIT was set to challenge West Point, the reigning national champions. Looking for an edge, Hart’s shooters came to him with a plan. The weekend of the match would coincide with the switch to daylight saving time, and they hypothesized that they could gain an advantage by resetting their body clocks early. So in advance of the meet the team began getting up an hour earlier than usual each morning. The experiment was a success. At the match, Hart says, 'we were the first ones on the range every morning. We were wide awake. We were ready to go.' And they won.
"In April 2009, in the depths of the nation’s financial crisis, MIT announced that it was abolishing the varsity pistol program and seven other varsity sports, in a bid to save $1.5 million. The pistol team reorganized as a “club sport,” supported by a much smaller stream of funding. 'We were shocked, because we were one of the most successful programs in the whole [athletic] department,' Hart says. MIT’s rifle team, for instance, has never won a national title, but it was allowed to preserve its varsity status. * * * [MIT did not explain but assistant athletic director Barb Bolich] does say the fact that the national pistol championships are not sponsored by the NCAA, which does sponsor a national rifle competition, played a part in the decision.
Note:
(a) There is no need to read the rest, though the report, four Web pages long, is interesting.
(b) "Even with a dozen shooters firing at once, pistol is a curiously solitary sport. * * * even when rivals meet on the same range, there’s no effort to psych one another out; shooters are too focused on their own mental states. 'You weren’t really competing against the other competitors,' [a student surnamed] Lee says. 'You were competing against yourself.' It’s the kind of challenge MIT students are well practiced in, trained by long days and nights at lab tables and hunched over dense texts in the library."
(i) psych (vt):
"1.1: (as adjective psyched) excited and full of anticipation <we’ve told him you were coming—he’s really psyched>
2: analyse (something) in psychological terms <mother had it all psyched out in three minutes> www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/psych
It is the definition 2 that fits the bill.
(ii) psych (vt): "to analyze or figure out (as a problem or course of action) <I psyched it all out by myself and decided — David Hulburd> www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/psyche