Portsmouth High sharpshooter is aiming high

Ruby Gomes to compete next year on University of Kentucky’s rifle team

By Jim McGaw
Posted 11/16/17

PORTSMOUTH — Ruby Gomes has had bullseyes in her sights for five years now, but her ultimate target is the 2020 Summer Olympics.

The Portsmouth High School senior and rifle-shooter …

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Portsmouth High sharpshooter is aiming high

Ruby Gomes to compete next year on University of Kentucky’s rifle team

Posted

PORTSMOUTH — Ruby Gomes has had bullseyes in her sights for five years now, but her ultimate target is the 2020 Summer Olympics.

The Portsmouth High School senior and rifle-shooter recently received a scholarship from the University of Kentucky, one of the top-ranked schools in that sport, and on Sunday signed a letter of intent to compete on the Wildcats’ rifle team next year. Several people who helped coach and mentored Ruby attended her signing party at St. John’s Lodge on Sprague Street.

Rifle-shooting’s not a high school sport here and shooting ranges are few and far between, but Ruby still practices three hours a day, six days a week at the Taunton Rifle and Pistol Club about 40 minutes away.

“No, I love it,” she responded when asked if it ever gets monotonous. “That’s one of the keys. To be any good, you have to love it — especially with something like this, when you’re doing the same thing every single time. But that’s the challenge of it and what I really like about it.”

And make no mistake, Ruby is really good at what she does. Her father, Bob Andreozzi, one of the coaches of a Junior Club in Taunton, showed a reporter a piece of paper with a bullseye. A barely visible dot was in the center.

“That dot in the middle is the 10, and she’s consistently hitting that dot at 10 meters. She’s basically hitting something that you can’t even see,” Mr. Andreozzi said, adding that Ruby is putting up “world-class scores.”

So how do you see that dot?

“You don’t,” said Ruby. “You just line up the sights and aim for the middle.”

Ruby shoots from 10 meters away with an air rifle, and from 50 yards or 50 meters away with a .22 smallbore rifle. Although each shooter uses live ammunition, an electronic system and an infrared laser measures each competitor’s accuracy down to fractions of millimeters. Ruby also uses a laptop with the Russian-developed SCATT system, which can simulate shooting at distances up to 1,000 meters, 

Ruby’s won a couple of regional matches in Massachusetts and came in second during a competition in Fort Benning, Ga., which qualified her for the World Cup in Munich, German.

“But she actually passed it up and took her spot on the U.S. team to shoot in Pilzen (Czech Republic) in May at a junior international match,” her father said. From there Ruby went to Bisley, England with the NRA Randle team to help win a competition for the U.S. 

“The 2020 Olympic Games is my goal,” said Ruby, who wants to follow the path of other young shooters who have found success at the international stage. 

Ginny Thrasher won a gold at the 2016 Rio Games and she wasn’t even a sophomore yet in college. You can go as far as you want with it,” Ruby said.

Ultimatum at 13

Ruby’s path to the shooting range started with an ultimatum when she was 13.

“My parents made me choose between band, work or finding a sport,” Ruby said. “I was too young to work and I didn’t like band, so I found this by actually shooting cans in my backyard with a Walmart pellet BB gun. I was pretty good, and my mom found the junior program out here in Taunton.”

Last year, Ruby spent her entire school year training at the Olympic training center in Colorado

“That was definitely a crazy experience,” Ruby said. “I moved out there my junior year and I started actually with online schools but I couldn’t concentrate, not being in a classroom. So, I enrolled in a completely new high school, knowing nobody there with a very different atmosphere.”

She earned a full access badge to enter the training facility whenever she wanted. On top of her schoolwork, Ruby trained four to five hours a day, seven days a week. 

“But it was definitely the greatest decision I ever made for my shooting,” she said.

Shooting is an expensive sport. Amber Andreozzi, Ruby’s mom, estimated the total cost of her daughter’s equipment — special protective clothing, rifle, boots and more — is about $20,000.

“And that’s without the ammo,” Ms. Andreozzi said.

But unlike in most sports, Ruby has benefited from training and mentoring from some of the top competitors in the world, she said.

Proud of her talent

As for the secret to being a good shooter? “Having fun with it and always wanting to achieve more,” Ruby said.

When she first started out, Ruby said she kept her talent pretty much to herself.

“When I was younger, I didn’t want people to think it was weird that I shot guns; it has a different connotation when people first hear it,” she said. “But now I’m really happy where I am and proud of my achievements, so I definitely talk about it a lot more.”

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Meet our staff
Jim McGaw

A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.