Rifle
February 19, 2019 - 05:05 PM

UK Rifle Confirmed for 2019 NCAA Championships

by Jake Most

LEXINGTON, Ky. – The Kentucky rifle team will make its 19th consecutive appearance at the NCAA Championships after it qualified as one of eight team qualifiers for the 2019 season on Tuesday and earned the No. 2-seed.

The championship will be held March 8-9 with West Virginia as hosts at the WVU Coliseum in Morgantown, West Virginia.

UK reached the NCAA Championships for the 25th time. The Wildcats have won the national title twice — last year and in 2011, and UK has six runner-up finishes.

The top eight teams in both smallbore three-position and air rifle events were selected based on the average of the three highest regular-season aggregate scores with no more than one match at any given site. The average of the three highest scores was added to the aggregate scores from the designated qualifiers to determine the top eight teams.

UK’s three-score average was 4704.33, and added to UK’s 4707 Saturday gave UK’s NCAA qualifying score aggregate of 9411.33.

Kentucky (11-1, 7-1 Great American Rifle Conference) finished second in the GARC regular-season standings.

The GARC Championships will be Feb 22-24 in Akron, Ohio.

The events for the 2019 National Collegiate Men’s and Women’s Rifle Championships will be individual smallbore rifle three-position (60 shots) and air rifle (60 shots), with individual finals in each event, team smallbore rifle three-position and team air rifle.