The NC State rifle team took top honors at the National Rifle Association Sectional Saturday afternoon on the campus of The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. The highlight of the event was State’s 2,322 score in the smallbore portion of the sectional, which set a school record by seven points.
The No. 9 Wolfpack (10-5, 5-3 GARC) followed the record-breaking performance in the smallbore portion by shooting 2,339 in the air rifle section for an aggregate score of 4,661. The Pack finished the sectional in first place, beating out schools North Georgia and The Citadel.
Senior Lucas Kozeniesky, a 2016 Olympic athlete, took the top individual placement after shooting 585 in smallbore and 590 air rifle for a total aggregate of 1,175. Including Kozeniesky, the Wolfpack took the top six overall individual spots at the sectional. Both Kozeniesky and sophomore William Marciniak registered perfect 100s in their second series in the prone position.
Graduate Lauren Phillips achieved the highest score for the Wolfpack in the air rifle section, shooting 592. Phillips’ mark was due to her shooting a perfect score in both the first and sixth series.
Despite the win, head coach Keith Miller felt as though his team left some shooting to be desired.
“We really missed a golden opportunity today,” Miller told NC State Athletics. “With a program record smallbore score, all we needed to do was shoot an average air rifle score and we would have fired a nice total that would have improved our ranking average. It would have cut the gap between us and number eight in half, making the race for the critical top eight much tighter. As it is, we’re statistically in about the same place that we were coming into the match.”
NC State is looking to increase its overall statistics before the NCAA championships, which are held March 10-11 in Columbus, Ohio. With its current No. 9 team ranking, the State is chasing Nebraska for the valuable No. 8 spot. The Wolfpack lost to the Cornhuskers 4,678-4,665 Jan. 15 in West Point, New York.
The Pack’s final competition before the NCAAs will be the Great America Rifle Conference, (GARC) which will take place in Akron, Ohio from Feb. 24-25.
“While we’re very happy with our smallbore today, we have some work to do over the next couple of weeks,” Miller told NC State Athletics. “We return to The Citadel in two weeks for our NCAA Qualifier match, which will be the final determiner for how we end up nationally. After that match, we’ll know whether we qualified as a team for the NCAAs. If not, we’ll also learn if we have any individual qualifiers.”
NC State will look to bolster its team ranking when it returns to The Citadel Saturday, Feb. 18 for an NCAA qualifier.
Junior shooter Caitlyn Ford looks through her sights in the Wolfpack's rifle meet against North Georgia on Jan 29. Ford tied with graduate student and teammate Lauren Phillips for the top individual score of the smallbore competition with a 578 clip in the 4657-4547 win at Reynolds Coliseum.
