Though there is real talent some times.

After my daughter Heather had been varsity on the rifle team for three and a half years, they had a visit from a shooter on the West Point team.  He watched my daughter shoot and was perturbed.  Her rifle was too large [it was a left over special order for a very large guy].  She had to put the stock under her arm, then crane over and look down the sites out of the corner of her non-dominant eye.  Shooting that way she was making respectable scores.  Not enough to reliably medal at matches, but enough to make the top half.

It turns out no one had really paid attention to her and with no experience outside of the team, she did not know any better.  I am not exactly a rifleman. When the West Pointer remarked on what was going on, the coach and others were terribly embarrassed.  They had just been seeing a cute blond and her scores were good and ...  They got her a normal rifle, adjusted it to her and she shot another round (though still with her non-dominant eye).  The same day improvement was enough to put her scores in the reliable to medal score.

Without experience or training, from the start she shot well enough to make varsity on the team.  With extremely bad equipment and no real coaching, she shot well enough to move to varsity as a freshman.  That is an example of talent.

Rachel was the only kid to be advanced a year in Plano in a several year period.  Unlike the families trying to get that to happen, her family did not.  She doesn't attend the week-end school, doesn't do drills, and her family spends their free time trying to teach her how to socialize.

It was my worry about her that led to this essay. [3]

[Afterword]