CMP Club News: A Blunder and Many Acts of Sportsmanship Seen at Down East Garand Club in March

Submitted by Mark Valletta, President, Down East Garand Shooters

Down East Garand Shooters (DEGS) is a CMP Affiliated Club in Eastern North Carolina that has a tradition of awarding one lucky member an M-1 Garand at our annual end of year banquet. Any member who has competed in a minimum of five match relays per season is eligible to be included in a drawing for the M-1 Garand.

This year, the drawing procedure went off the rails due to a bad decision on my part. Typically, all eligible member names go in a pot and are drawn out one at a time, eliminating each member as we go. The last person standing gets the rifle. It’s a bit of a more dramatic way to give the rifle away rather than just drawing the name out and being done with it.

I’ll spare the details, but the end result was that our member, Chris Hymen, through no fault of his own, was given an unfair advantage at the end of the drawing. My blunder caused member Kim Morey to have a win snatched from her. That was totally on me and my poor suggestion of how to resolve this issue.

Anyway, Kim Morey was set to be the raffle winner, and it went Chris’s way. The first act of sportsmanship was Chris immediately saying that we should draw over at the first match of the season. We immediately decide to re-draw at our first match of the 2023 season. (Thank you for the idea, Chris! I owe you some consolation prize ammo, my friend!)

As we were resolving the match snafu at the banquet, Tom Wareham later suggested to me that because some people had won multiple rifles over the years, it might be cool if a winning member who had previously won a rifle voluntarily gave it to someone who had never won a rifle. He said if he won this year, he would pass it along to a member who had not received one in the past. Yet another sportsmanlike suggestion. 

Well, Tom didn’t win, but apparently the idea set a spark.

The rifle re-drawing occurred Saturday, March 18, and low and behold, Jason Cisarano (a previous winner of two Garands) was the winner. Tony Simonetti, who had never won a rifle previously, was the second-to-last member standing in the drawing. Jason decided that he wanted to let Tony have the rifle. After some haggling, Tony reluctantly accepted. 

Thank you, Jason, for your act of sportsmanship!

Shortly after the match, Tony came to Jason and I and said, “You know, Kim Morey should have ended up with this rifle at the banquet.”

Even though he had never won one of our rifles, Tony decided that he wanted Kim to have the rifle. We asked Kim to come over and presented her the 2022 Season Garand. She was thrilled.

I can never begin to say enough about the caliber (no pun intended) of the character of the members of this club, and beyond that, the many folks who are involved in the shooting sports. I count it as an honor to be associated with each of you. Thanks to our club members for giving my banquet blunder a very great ending!

CMP encourages you to get involved in your local clubs and help assist new marksman get started in the sport of target shooting. Find your local club on our website at https://ct.thecmp.org/app/v1/index.php?do=clubSearch or reach out to your local State Director at https://thecmp.org/training-tech/state-director/ to find out how you can help in your state.

The Civilian Marksmanship Program is a federally chartered 501 (c) (3) non-profit corporation. It is dedicated to firearm safety and marksmanship training and to the promotion of marksmanship competition for citizens of the United States. For more information about the CMP and its programs, log onto www.TheCMP.org.