Marine Corps Marksmanship Team

"It's a good thing the Marine shooters aren't allowed to compete for credits..."

- Anonymous marksmanship competitor

The Marine Corps Marksmanship Team was a group of competitive shooting teams that represented the Marines in various civilian competitions across the galaxy. First formed in 4,924 BBY by Lorna Illior in the wake of the Marine Corps Band's success in promoting public relations, it became a fixture at prestigious events and eventually formed the basis for the Corps' first scout/sniper school.

History
The team in its first iteration was created by Commander Lorna Illior, leader of the Sixteenth Marine Regiment. A crack shot herself with all manner of -type weaponry, she had developed a reputation as a person who could pick off moving at distances of over a kilometer with only the most basic of scopes attached to the standard Marine battle rifle of the time. After organizing a series of shooting competitions within her regiment that lasted for over a year, she had assembled a team of twenty troopers and officers that included experts,  experts, and  experts. Commander Illior furtively entered the members of this team into a number of high-profile civilian competitions, each of which was won by the Marine entrants who, prior to entering, had agreed to donate any winnings to charity.

When word reached the Commandant of the Marines, he was at first furious that Illior had taken these actions without clearing them with her chain of command. However, the public reaction to the revelation of the Marines' role in setting new standards for competitive shooting was overwhelmingly positive. Buckling to political pressure, the Marine Corps brass refrained from reprimanding the commander, and instead appointed her to oversee the building of several additional teams for exhibition matches and other public-relations events. These were often done in conjunction with performances by other public-relations units within the Corps, such as the Marine Corps Band and, much later, the Red Gundarks flight demonstration team. Illior herself would star in some of these exhibitions, demonstrating her remarkable long-range shooting skills throughout the galaxy. Many years later, members of these teams would form the core faculty of the Marines' first scout/sniper schools.