Oct. 10, 2014
LEXINGTON, Ky. – The third-ranked Kentucky rifle team will begin the 2014-15 season at home against Akron on Saturday beginning at 9 a.m. ET.
Smallbore will begin in the Buell Armory at 9 a.m. Due to space restrictions at Buell Armory, fans are asked not to enter the range to watch the competition until air rifle begins after 11:15 a.m. ET.
Fans can watch results in the upstairs portion of the Armory. Live scoring will be available at Ukrifle.com.
“It’s always fun when the season starts in the middle of October,” UK head coach Harry Mullins said. “In retrospect of trying to get five or six weeks’ worth of work in I think we have one of our more challenging seasons this year. The competition gets tighter and tighter every year.
“We want to see where we are at as far as how we’re processing our shots and things we’ve been working on for the last five or six weeks. We’re hoping to see some good results, and hopefully those results will yield some good numbers.”
The Akron rifle team opened Great America Rifle Conference (GARC) competition with a win at Navy last Saturday.
The Zips scored 4,615 to the Midshipmen’s 4,592 on what was a record-setting day.
“I think our guys and girls are ready for some good competitions to test themselves for the first time this year,” Mullins said.
The Wildcats finished third at the 2014 NCAA Championships, behind only West Virginia and Alaska-Fairbanks.
UK returns three of five starters from the 2014 NCAA Bronze-Medal team.
Leading the way for UK in 2014 will be defending Individual Air Rifle NCAA Champion Connor Davis and 2014 U.S. Air Rifle Junior Champion Sonya May as the pair were the top-two team competitors for UK a year ago.
UK also returns four 2014 All-Americans to this year’s team as Davis earned the honor in three events, May in two, while Heather Kirby and Elijah Ellis each earned the honor in air rifle. Jonathan Pinkel was an Honorable Mention All-America in air rifle.
Additionally Cody Manning enters his senior season coming off a strong summer, as he finished 19th in the USA Shooting Prone Championships, and 25th in Air Rifle. He competed at the U.S. Championships alongside teammates Davis, May, Ellis, Pinkel, Jason Sharbel and Luke South.
