Miss Audrey Richard, age 13, a Washington, D. C., junior high school student with two years of small bore competition behind her, tried her hand at high powered rifle firing on October 26 at the Quantico, Va. Marine range. The occasion was the largest rifle match of any kind ever held in Virginia and one of the largest big bore events in the east.
Pitted against Miss Richard were 73 other shooters—all men, and many of them shooters long before Audrey was born.
But, Audrey was the uncrowned champ. She won five of the seven matches she was eligible for against competition like that. Starting early in the tourney, sponsored by the Marine Detachment and the Virginia Rifle and Revolver Club, Miss Richard ran off the first two events. She copped the 200 yard slow fire with 93 x 100 and the 300 yard clash with 91 points, Tom Gresham, Lynchburg, and Edward Corey, Charlottesville, beat her at 600, but the youngster followed with a win at 1,000 yards with 48 points.
Dale Duncan, Washington, won the 200 standing with a good 47 score, while Hugh Riley, Arlington, and Gresham split the rapid fire tests at 200 and 300 yards.
Audrey's crowning triumph came in the slow fire aggregate which she won by 21 points over Corey. She had 316 points.
Third in the slow fire aggregate, Everett Harris, Arlington, who hadn't won a match all day, made off with the Virginia Military Rifle Championship with 225, three points over W. Philbrick, of Portsmouth.
In the four man team match, which was an aggregate of five individual matches, Company 104, Virginia Protective Force, Fredericksburg, copped the Virginia Military Team Championship with a 939 total.
Miss Richard's fifth first place medal was in the women's aggregate.
She is the daughter of Marine Gunner Frank M, Richard, of Quantico, who—along with those 73 mere male competitors—thinks she might get somewhere in this shooting game.
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