Delaware National Guard marksman compete in the Winston P. Wilson Championship matches

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Top marksman from the Delaware National Guard represent the state at the 43rd Winston P. Wilson Championship matches. The competition runs for five days and tests the marksmanship skills of the finest military marksman in the world. This year, eight members of the Delaware National Guard are participating in the championship matches.

Each state can send two teams to participate, however, half of Alpha Team must be novice shooters (have never competed in the matches on an Alpha Team). Being a novice shooter representing the Delaware National Guard at such a prestigious event is an accomplishment in itself.

"It was quite a privilege to be selected as a member of the Delaware team," said Staff Sgt. Timothy Gantzhorn, Bravo Team, novice shooter. "It gives us a chance to showcase and highlight what our training programs back at home have done for us and validate all the levels of support we get to have the training that we need to be successful."

Each team competing has a team captain that coordinates practice sessions, reviews the marksmanship tasks and helps foster team cohesion. Once the teams arrive and begin the competition, they become and even more cohesive unit; celebrating success and talking through mishaps.

"We have team meetings, we make sure we get together every night just to review what happened and what's going to happen the next day in the matches; so cohesion is great, we've got a great group here," said Master Sgt. Chuck Longfellow, Alpha Team captain.

Throughout the various legs of the state, national and regional competitions, marksman earn points toward becoming a distinguished shooter, in rifle, pistol or both.

"A distinguished pistol shot or a distinguished rifleman is somebody who has earned at least 30 leg points; they call them leg points, they are actually EIC, Excellence in Competition credit points," explained Longfellow.

Even though Delaware is a small state, the guard has several distinguished shooters, both rifle and pistol.

The Bravo Team of Sgt. 1st Class Anthony Graciano (team captain), Staff Sgt. Timothy Gantzhorn, Staff Sgt. Basil Woodall and Spc. Lloyd Layfield won third place in the Winston P. Wilson National Guard Infantry Team Match.

Sgt. 1st Class Victor Consiglio won the Chief's 50 Badge.