Allentown High School marksman Dan Jonas, a sophomore at the Naval Academy, tied his personal best in the NCAA championships at Fairbanks, Alaska, but just missed reaching the eight-man individual championships in smallbore rifle by five points.
He had one of his best days, shooting a 576 and actually finished 23rd among the 48 competitors. He said he particularly remembers the brutally cold weather conditions on his way to the range that reached 30-below zero.
“The performance was pretty good — not spectacular, but not bad,” Jonas said of the March 13 competition. “I put in a good showing for the Naval Academy.”
As a freshman a year ago, Jonas missed reaching the eight-man finals by two points while breaking in a new rifle.
In the last regular season match against John Jay College, Jonas was part of a team record-setting aggregate score of 4,651. He also tied for the high score in a loss to arch rival Army.
Navy, which came into the season nationally ranked and a year ago was No. 12 in the nation late in the season, did not qualify a team for this year’s NCAA championships while competing for the second year in the Great American Rifle Conference.
For Jonas, the strong finish to his season was a determined comeback from a devastating family tragedy. In early December at the Army-Navy football game, Jonas stepped away from his assigned seating for a few minutes to go to another area of the stadium to spend time visiting with his dad, Gordon, a coach and top level competitor in rifle. As Dan Jonas arrived to the aisle, he saw his dad collapse and medical crews quickly attend to him.
Gordon Jonas died that day from a brain aneurysm.
“I think what my father enjoyed doing most was teaching,” Dan Jonas said. “He enjoyed going to people his age and younger, sharing his knowledge [in rifle] and expertise and showing them how to move forward.” Gordon Jonas served 21 years in the Army — four years active and 17 in the reserve. He retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2009. He had worked for nearly 10 years for Merck pharmaceutical.
“He was especially very good at industry efficiency, increasing output and decreasing waste. He’d take their problems and make them go away,” Dan Jonas said of his dad.
Jonas said his dad had a profound influence on his life personally during his years growing up in Allentown and on his career as he developed a love and skill as a nationally accredited competitor in smallbore and air rifle regional and national open competitions. And it was a difficult time for him to try to come back for the long rifle season that spans both semesters.
“This was not expected, definitely surprising,” Jonas said of the tragedy. “The one thing is that it happened before the winter break, so I had time to go home for a couple of weeks. Navy has the resource of mentoring and counseling [when I got back]. I was able to get in my exams and it was nice to go back to a structured regimen, to focus on positive things.”
Jonas, the youngest of three brothers — neither of the others involved with rifle — said it was “a little hard coming back. So much shock.”
It was even different for him with his electronic shooting system in the basement of his home where he would shoot in competition against his dad with a system using an infrared light into a sensor.
“I thought, ‘How am I going to do this,’ ” Jonas said. “In rifle, I did the sport because I wanted to show my dad how far I’ve gone and also I did it because I wanted to. Now, it’s not because of what others expect of me to do well but because of what I am doing.”
Jonas usually has some offseason competition lined up but said there is nothing set up at the moment. Instead, he is enjoying some downtime as he finishes his semester at the academy. He said there may be some rifle competitions in the months ahead before he heads back in the fall to the academy and another season beginning early in that semester.