Reaching his target

Page Dowdy/Chesterfield Observer Andy Sherrer earned his distinguished rifleman badge, joining the likes of military legends like World War I Gen. John J. Pershing.

It took Andy Sherrer a long time, but he's finally getting his distinguished rifleman badge - 29 years after he began entering competitions to earn the coveted marksmanship award.

Sherrer, 61, of Midlothian, may well hold the record for the longest period it's ever taken someone to earn the necessary 30 points to "go distinguished," as the distinction is known in shooter parlance.

"To take that long is unusual. That's the longest I can recall hearing somebody's been working at it," says Gary Anderson, director of the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP), an organization established by Congress to promote marksmanship sports. It oversees the competitions and awards for the distinguished civilian marksmanship badges.

A school bus inspector and mechanic for Chesterfield County Public Schools, Sherrer will receive his badge at an awards ceremony in early August during the National Matches (the annual series of marksmanship competitions that are considered the World Series of shooting matches) at Camp Perry, a National Guard base on Lake Erie in Ohio.

The distinguished accomplishment takes years of dedication and single-minded marksmanship practice. Less than 2,000 people have earned the distinguished rifleman badge since 1884. (Sherrer holds Badge No. 1,927.) The youngest person to earn the distinction was 13-year-old Tyler Rico from Arizona in 2007. The oldest individual was an 82-year-old.

There are three different distinguished badges - for rifle, pistol and international shooting. (Anderson, the CMP's director, was awarded the nation's first international shooting badge from President Kennedy in April 1963.) Earning any of the distinguished badges requires Herculean feats of marksmanship to be repeated again and again. A competitor must come in the top 10 percent of shooters in numerous regional and national shooting matches, earning a sliding number of points for their ranking in each match.

The competitions "are based on skills a military marksman would be expected to have," Anderson says, requiring a combination of rapid and precision shooting from various stances and distances as great as 600 yards without a scope. One of the contests requires the marksman to go from standing to prone, firing 10 precise shots at 300 yards - with a magazine change in the middle - in 70 seconds flat.

"He's in very good company," Anderson says of Sherrer. In addition to several Olympic gold medalist marksmen, the ranks of distinguished riflemen include military legends such as World War I Gen. John J. Pershing, who earned his distinguished badge as a second lieutenant in 1891.

"It's probably the most coveted award they can earn short of national champion … and it's coveted in part because it takes a long time to earn it, in that you don't just go out and get one great score and get the badge. You've got to get in the top 10 multiple times. It's not an easy thing to do," says Anderson. "The fact that Mr. Sherrer stuck with it all this time is, I think, a testament to how important and strong the appeal is to earn this badge."

A Vietnam War veteran who served as a truck mechanic in the Marines, Sherrer began competitively shooting as a Marines reservist in the late '70s. He earned his first points toward his distinguished rifleman badge in 1982, around which time he was recruited by the Army Reserves as a competitive shooter. Sherrer left the Army Reserves in 1990, and dropped in and out of competitive marksmanship before getting back into it seriously in recent years. "It wasn't like I was shooting continuously for 29 years. I tried to get back into it in the mid '90s, and that didn't work out because I wasn't focused enough," he says. "I made it a mission in the last few years. I really concentrated, and then I ended up missing out [on getting the necessary points for my distinguished badge] twice by one point, which was really tough."

On May 7, Sherrer finally earned his distinguished rifleman badge at the CMP Eastern Games at Camp Butner National Guard Training Center in North Carolina.

As a distinguished rifleman, Sherrer says he feels a responsibility to "try to give something back to your fellow countryman," adding that "I know that sounds corny in this day and age."

He plans to volunteer to train rookie soldiers to shoot in combat and to be a mentor to junior marksmen. He's already volunteered for the Wounded Warrior Project, helping severely wounded vets of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars to regain self-confidence by engaging in target practice. ("Some guy shooting didn't have legs. One guy only fired three rounds; he said it hurt too much, but he was there. They had an absolutely fantastic time.")

Now that Sherrer holds Distinguished Rifleman Badge No. 1,927, he's also set another goal for himself: "I want to start shooting the pistol and become distinguished in pistol shooting and become the ultra-rare double distinguished [marksman]," he says.

If he does, he'll cement his record for perseverance and longevity in competitive shooting because he earned his first points toward the Distinguished Pistol award in 1982.

Don't count Sherrer out of that competition, even if he has to set another new record to do it. After all, 29 years from now, he'll just be 90.