The members of the rifle team are no strangers to travel. They have packed into their white van and traveled to West Virginia, Georgia and Kentucky since the beginning of October to participate in tournaments, and they will head to New York before November is over.

However, coach Keith Miller said the real trick will be getting other teams to come to Raleigh.

“We only have one home match this year because our facilities are so bad,” Miller said, referring to the bottom floor of Reynolds Coliseum where the team holds its matches.

“It’s cold as hell in the winter and boiling hot in the summer, so over the years teams have liked coming less and less. They’ll come when they have to, but only if they have to.”

The only team that will be filing into Reynolds’ cramped basement this year is Virginia Military Institute. Miller said the only reason VMI will compete in Raleigh this year is because its home range is undergoing renovations and the match “wouldn’t happen” if it couldn’t use State’s limited facilities.

The team retreats to The Firearms Education & Training Center in Apex on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Samantha Bullard, a sophomore in biological sciences, said that while the Center has more space and better equipment, the commute is not exactly ideal.

“It sucks to have to travel 30 minutes to practice twice a week,” she said.

Miller said the commute is necessary, though.

“[Reynolds], from an access standpoint, is very good, but it just doesn’t have the structure or the utilities that we need for college rifling,” Miller said.

Jenna Matino, a senior in electrical engineering, said the group’s facility situation stems from the money the team brings in.

“We don’t earn a lot of money,” Matino said. “So I guess you could say we keep getting the short end of the stick.”

The team participated in last weekend’s competition without sophomore Katie Siegert, who is sidelined indefinitely with a bad case of mononucleosis. With only five athletes on this year’s roster, Miller said his team is walking a fine line.

“We have to have four shooters for a match, and we travel with usually a minimum of six, just to be safe,” he said. “I’d rather not be quite this lean.”

The number of team members has plunged since last year, when the roster included 13 shooters.

“We had a couple of graduations, a couple of players that chose not to return and one student that transferred,” Miller said. “We have no new members because we lost all our recruits to schools that had better ranges.”

The team faced off against Ole Miss on Saturday and Kentucky on Sunday. Although the team didn’t win either match and dropped to 4-3 on the year, each shooter improved on a personal level, according to team member Noel Keck.

“We didn’t win, but everyone improved in some event,” Keck, a junior in biology and criminology, said.

Although the season is young, two members have already posted personal bests. Keck earned hers Oct. 20 at a competition in North Georgia, and Thomas Knight, a senior in civil engineering and the squad’s only male competitor, posted high numbers Oct. 6 in West Virginia.

Matino said her team is looking forward to another long and prosperous season.

“As long as we keep our averages up — and nobody else gets mono — I think we’ll be OK,” Matino said with a laugh.