Page 23 - Leisure Living Magazine: Spring 2021 Edition

‘Late to the Party’ Paula Crenshaw Is Distinguished Shooter At Age 67
By Ashley Brugnone, CMP Staff Writer
Paula Crenshaw, a 67-year-old grandmother, never stops reaching toward new ambitions. This November, Paula earned the prestigious Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) Distinguished Rifleman Badge at the 29 Palms Marine Base.
“I’ve always been late to the party,” she said. “I didn’t start medical school until I was 37.”
A physician from Reno, Nevada, Paula took up rifle shooting in her early 50’s – an endeavor that began as an aggravating attempt to support her husband’s interests and grew into a profound infatuation that led her to her own Distinguished Badge.
“The fulfillment of my dream,” she said.
Distinguished Badges are awarded to marks- manship competitors who collect at least 30 Ex- cellence-In-Competition (EIC) “leg” points – earned by placing in the top 10 percent of an EIC match. A program that was instilled by the War Department in 1884, the badge continues to be a valued accomplishment for determined marks- men on the firing lines today.
Paula is a member of the Coalinga Rifle Club in California and the Palomino Valley Gun Club in Nevada. She’s been on the hunt for a Distin- guished Badge since she earned her first points in 2018, then went on to claim her own “hard leg” (10 EIC points) at the annual National Matches at Camp Perry, Ohio, in 2019.
After that, “legging out” (that is, earning enough points to receive a Distinguished Badge) became a near obsession.
“I dry-fired almost every day,” she recalled. “I worked out. I thought about winning first thing in the morning and as I fell asleep at night. I read many shooting books, sometimes multiple times. I drove my non-shooting friends away talking about shooting!”
By the end of 2019, she had been so dedicated to competing that she had wrangled up 22 EIC points – only eight away from a badge.
The start of 2020 met Paula with not only the difficulty of finding matches due to the enduring
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Paula Crenshaw earned Distinguished Badge #2521 in 2020 at age 67.
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