No. 4 Rifle to Begin 2017-18 Season at Ole Miss Open
LEXINGTON, Ky. – The fourth-ranked Kentucky rifle team is set to begin its 2017-18 campaign toward this season’s NCAA Championships with its first event of the season – the Ole Miss Open in Oxford, Mississippi. UK is scheduled to shoot Saturday at 1:45 p.m. ET inside the Patricia C. Lamar National Guard Readiness Center on the Ole Miss Campus.
Fans can follow the match with live targets.
“It’s nice to get the season up and rolling after the training, preparation, and hard work that we’ve put in for the last month,” head coach Harry Mullins said. “Moving forward into the first couple of matches, we’re going to stay true to the plan of working on the same things that we have been in training and enhancing them each match. If we do that, then we should see good results.”
The event features 11 schools, all of which are ranked in the CRCA Preseason Poll: No. 2 TCU, No. 3 Murray State, No. 9 N.C. State, No. 10 Army, No. 11 Memphis, No. 12 Ole Miss, No. 15 Jacksonville State, No. 18 Morehead State, No. 19 UT Martin, and No. 20 North Georgia.
“If we stay within a few points of where we’ve been training, then it’s been a pretty good performance. We had a good training session last weekend from a team-score perspective. I see the potential that the team has. It’s about building toward peaking at the right time.”
UK will travel senior Billy Azzinaro, juniors Hanna Carr, Cathryn Papasodora, and Jason Spaude, sophomore Ian Foos, and freshman Henrik Larsen.
Larsen will make his debut as a Wildcat. Prior to his arrival at UK, the Mysen, Norway, native had great success in the junior rifle ranks and international competition. Larsen claimed bronze medals in men’s 50m three-position rifle at both the 2017 Junior World Championships and 2016 European Junior Championships in addition to two silver medals he received in 50m prone and three-position as part of the Norwegian National Team at the European Junior Championships.
First-Team All-Conference smallbore selection Carr enters her junior year coming off a season where she held the team-high average in smallbore (582.77) and was second on the team in aggregate average at 1170.08. This summer the Second-Team Smallbore NRA All-American was also crowned the USA Shooting Three-Position National Champion in two different divisions – the women’s and junior divisions – following scores of 1183 and 1180, respectively. Carr also placed first earlier that week in 50m prone when she fired 621.5 and 618.6 to finish almost three full points ahead of second place.
During his junior season, Azzinaro elevated his game and fired a career-high 598 in air rifle, which was the third highest score among collegians for the season and was the team-high score for 2016-17. The Second-Team All-Conference Combined selection also set a new career-high score in smallbore (588) in a road win against Navy.
In 2016-17, Papasodora shot 590 or better in air rifle on five different occasions with her season-high score of 592 in a match against Nebraska. She ultimately ranked second on the team in air rifle average at 588.73. The junior also fired a 584 in smallbore at the Withrow Invitational, which was just one point from her career-best score in the discipline.
Spaude compiled his best air rifle score of 592 in the NCAA Qualifier against Morehead State and even shot 591 twice last season. The Saginaw, Michigan, native was third on the team in smallbore average at 576.69, and his best performance in the discipline came at the NCAA Championships in Columbus, Ohio, when he shot 581.
Foos enters his sophomore season after a 583.4 air rifle average over nine regular season matches for the Wildcats as a freshman. He fired his season-high air rifle score of 589 against Alaska-Fairbanks.
