May 05, 2005

Quantico sniper competition to resume in October

By Laura Bailey
Times staff writer


The annual Marine Corps Scout Sniper Competition will be held in October at Quantico, Va., three years after the competition was canceled.
The annual competition was nixed at the last moment in October 2002 as a reaction to the Washington-area sniper shootings that left 10 dead.

The cancellation was due to “sensitivities” to the shootings in the area, a spokesman said at the time. Before it was canceled, four scout-sniper teams, one from each Marine division, traveled to Quantico each year to compete.

While the competitions were slated to return in 2003, the Iraq war put them off once again.

“The annual competition was not conducted the past three years due to ongoing operations,” said a Corpswide message provided to Marine Corps Times on May 3. According to the message, the Corps’ snipers are ready to start competing again.

“Informal liaison with the sniper community has indicated that the desire to re-institute this event exists,” the message states.

The Marine Corps is now calling for each division to conduct its own divisionwide competitions to select their best scout-sniper team.

Those two-man teams will then travel to Quantico in October to compete in Corpswide competition. The six-day competition puts the eight men through field tests in skills such as land navigation, field sketching and known and unknown distance marksmanship.


Ellie