Unstoppable aim

All-female team sets history

For the first time in the American Criminal Justice Association’s 88-year history, an all-female team topped firearms-upper division, as part of the organization’s national conference from March 30 to April 4. 

ACJA-Lambda Alpha Epsilon is a national student organization dedicated to undergraduate and graduate students pursuing a degree in criminal justice. 

UTRGV students senior Christina Hernandez, senior Kayla Navarro and sophomore Brianna Rodriguez won first place in the Upper Division in the ACJA annual conference in Long Beach, California.

    Hernandez also won first place in the Academic Testing Lambda Alpha Epsilon Knowledge-Upper Division and Navarro second place firearms individual-Upper Division. 

Michael Sanchez, ACJA firearms instructor and a criminal justice lecturer at UTRGV, said behind the team’s success is a training structure.

“Each person, when they’re learning, has their own learning curve, so it’s being able to individualize the corrections and the mechanical improvements they need to,” Sanchez said.

  He said women generally succeed at weapons training.

“Because I don’t have to get past their ego, you don’t have to push through that ego, so the girls are very easy to teach,” the firearms instructor said. “I’ve got as many excellent shooting girls as I have guys, if not more.”

The team’s win also reflects broader shifts in the understanding of gender roles in law enforcement, according to Sanchez, who also instructs students in the criminal justice division.

“It shows that the whole idea of policing being male-dominated, male only, ‘Only men can do this’ is a fallacy because they did better than all of the guys,” he said. 

 Hernandez said victory meant more than a trophy for her.

“It was very surreal,” she said. “I remember when all the girls, like, in the competition, sort of stand up. … I wanted to cry. Yeah, it just meant a lot to me.”

For Rodriguez, pushing past prejudices required a shift in perspective.

“How you overcome them is, like, not think about anything else,” she said. “Just do what you want to do and, you know, you can achieve anything.”

Rodriguez was the first person on her team to shoot. 

“I think I was the first person of our team, like, to shoot in the group, and it was literally just me and a bunch of older men, so that was kind of very nerve-wracking,” she said. 

Despite competing in separate categories, the team members said they remained together.

“Honestly, it was really good,” Rodriguez said. “We weren’t, like, really with each other. We were, like, all alone in different categories but … like we told her … you know, ‘We can do it. Don’t think about anything else, just do it.’”  

The Rider asked the ACJA members what the win meant to them.

“It feels so nice,” Hernandez replied. “Like, it’s also, like, so supportive of us. And … just knowing that we’re the first is, like, really good. Amazing.”

Criminal justice senior Luis Vasquez, vice president of ACJA, said he is “proud” of the team’s performance.

“When they announced that they were the first-female team in the history of ACJA to ever place first, the entire crowd just erupted,” Vasquez said. “I think it motivated us more than anything because, I mean, they’re our students, they are our members.”