Edinburgh, IND. — At Camp Atterbury, 84 shooters, a much larger attendance compared to the last several years, from across the Indiana National Guard competed for the fabled Governor’s Twenty tab at the annual TAG Match, a competition designed to put their marksmanship skills to the test.
Past winners are looking for a ticket to the regional shooting competition and then to nationals for a chance at the President’s Hundred tab.
“The results from these courses of fire that we're doing will get submitted by the state marksmanship team all the way up to Fort Moore,” said 138th RTI’s Maj. Dane Miller, the assistant operations officer of this years state competition. “Soldiers from previous TAG matches come back because they crave that competition aspect of this event. There is a lot of work done before now that makes this competition as smooth as possible for all of these competitors.”
On the other hand, for some newcomers the reason is very simple.
“I’ll be honest with you, I just saw the Governor's 20 tab on some of the people in my unit. Something not a lot of people have and I decided I want it,” said Spc. Noah McLendon, a new competitor with the 438th Chemical Company. “There’s a lot of other schools I want to do in the Army and accolades I want to achieve. So this is the stepping stone, I guess, to get me there.”
“I'm having a great time. I think it's being run really well. I'm hoping everybody's having a good time and doing well. I mean, I just hope I'm doing better than them,” McLendon explained with a smirk.
Sadly, McLendon did not.
“Just with the training we've had in the last few months with 81st Troop Command my score just for qualification went up from 26 to 37.” said McLendon. “So I'm enjoying this. I did a lot better from just each training. So if I don't tab this time, I'll come back every year until it’s done.”
What McLendon’s story may prove is the training leading up to this competition and the competition weekend itself have noticeably improved readiness and morale across the variety of military occupations held by these Guardsmen.
Miller agrees, saying “I think a part of readiness is you need to challenge soldiers with good training and not just qualifications but with competitions like these. I truly believe when you have competitive training focused in the right area where everybody wins, even just by having extra time at the range, it will greatly improve readiness.”
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| Date Taken: | 09.15.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 09.15.2024 17:58 |
| Story ID: | 480914 |
| Location: | EDINBURGH, INDIANA, US |
| Web Views: | 27 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Indiana Guard’s Yearly TAG Sees a Larger Attendance Than Normal, by SGT Joshua Syberg, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
