It was completely silent throughout the Washington High School cafeteria except for the pops of compressed gas passing through rifle barrels and the plink of tiny metal pellets hitting their targets and dropping into a collection tray.

Eleven of the school's Air Force JROTC cadets lay on the floor carefully sizing up the tiny bullseyes on a cardboard cutout positioned 10 meters away from them before calmly squeezing the trigger.

Such is the routine three days a week for the unit's marksmanship team. The team competes in four regular season matches against other JROTC units in the area, plus a regional competition at the end of the season.

"(Marksmanship) is very much 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical," said Col. John Pardo, the school's senior aerospace science instructor who also oversees the marksmanship team.

The 12-person team is a mixture of cadets who have experience handling guns and shooting before and those who are starting from square one. The team initially attracts many cadets who are interested in shooting, but only the dedicated ones stick around.

"There are six hours of lessons and a written test to get through first," said Pardo, who competed in marksmanship at the collegiate level when he attended the Air Force Academy. "When they really get into it, they see it isn't as easy as they first thought."

But those who do decide to compete love it. The team competed in a postal match (where targets are shot locally and mailed to Civilian Marksmanship Program in Ohio to be scored) in late November, and finished third out of 38 teams from around the world.

Cadets say the trick to good shooting is learning how to control the emotions behind each shot - often no easy task for teenagers these days.

"To take a bad shot and then come back with a good one ... it's more mental than physical," said senior Jonathan Fagin, who placed first out of 469 competitors at the competition in November. "It's very hard not to psyche yourself out."

Dedication to coming to practice and putting in the time to shoot also plays a big role.

"People start to think that since they were bad and didn't hit any targets that they don't want to come again," said senior Kushaiah Pritchard, cadet commander and the captain of the marksmanship team. "I was bad at first but I kept coming and got better."

Marksmanship has helped deputy commander Cody Barnett build confidence in his abilities, something that he'll need in the future as he focuses on attending the Air Force Academy on his way to becoming a pilot.

"The colonel tells us to really go after the bulls eye and always assume you're going to hit it," said Barnett, who placed 34th overall in the November competition.

But perhaps most of all, marksmanship gives cadets another opportunity to excel in something.

"We have an opportunity to do something great," said Fagin, who's considering enlisting in the Air Force after graduation.

"It's another opportunity for them to do something more than just coming to class and then going home," Pardo said.

The opportunities to do great things keep coming for the team, as it recently received an invitation to the National JROTC competition at Anniston, Ala., in late February.