Feb. 25, 2012
OXFORD, Miss. — Using a strong performance from Heather Greathouse and Henri Junghänel, the Kentucky rifle team sits in third place after the smallbore portion of the Great American Rifle Conference Championships, hosted by Ole Miss at the Patricia C. Lamar United States Army National Guard Readiness Center.
Kentucky (11-1, 6-0 GARC) opened the GARC Championships with a solid smallbore performance, posting a 2313 total team score to place third overall, behind Army and West Virginia.
“It went alright today, I feel like we are definitely back on the up slide as far as our smallbore goes,” UK head coach Harry Mullins said. We had a good score even though we left some points on the board in certain areas. Our standing is getting better every day. Overall, I thought it went okay on the first day. We are in third place right now and just a few behind. Hopefully we can get rolling tomorrow and perform well in air gun.”
The Wildcats were led in smallbore by Junghänel, who fired a 585 to finish third overall among all the individual competitors. Greathouse fired a 581, while defending NCAA Champion in smallbore, Ethan Settlemires, finished with a 576.
“I am really proud of Henri for a good outing in smallbore,” Mullins said. “He had a good day and so did Heather and Ethan. There is always room for improvement but everyone worked hard and is getting better every day.”
UK’s entire roster traveled to the GARC Championships, with Stacy Wheatley (571), Jonathan Pinkel (572), Elijah Ellis (571), John Sutton (569) and Cody Manning (563) competing in smallbore Saturday. Katie Fretts had a 558, with Ethan Marne (559) and James Jasis (566) rounding out UK’s competitors.
The Wildcats will wrap up their stay in Oxford on Sunday with air rifle at the Patricia C. Lamar Army National Guard Readiness Center.
“We are a very solid air rifle team, so we have a chance to really make a move tomorrow,” Mullins said. “This is a great experience for us to make a move in the right direction after being a bit behind in smallbore. This is a really good chance for us to use this experience to get better for the overall goal.”
