UK Rifle Third after Smallbore at NCAA Championships

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The Kentucky rifle team sits in third place, nine points off TCU and West Virginia’s lead, after the day-one smallbore portion of the NCAA Championships inside WVU Coliseum.
 
The Championships will conclude on Saturday with air rifle.

The Wildcats put up a 2322 smallbore score on Friday. TCU and West Virginia each scored 2331, with the Horned Frogs claiming the event national title based on a 127-112 center-shot advantage. Murray State is in fourth place, two behind UK.
 
Senior Hanna Carr led the way for Kentucky with a 586 that got her a spot in the individual final where she finished eighth. Carr’s score was one off her season best.
 
Will Shaner fired a smallbore 580, six shy of his season-best, in his NCAA Championships debut. Cathryn Papasodora recorded a 579 and Hailee Sigmon rounded out UK’s counted scores with a 577.

UK’s smallbore team total was its seventh best output in the discipline this season.
 
UK NCAA Championships primer
UK is making its 19th consecutive appearance at the NCAA Championships.
 
The air rifle competition will start on Saturday at 10 a.m., with the second relay scheduled for noon. An eight-athlete final will begin at 2:30 p.m., and an award ceremony will immediately follow.
 
Tickets for the championships are on sale now at NCAA.com/tickets. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for youth 18 and under and $5 for groups of 10 or more.
 
All tickets are general admission. Additionally, tickets are valid all-day, allowing fans to leave the facility and re-enter as needed.
 
The Wildcats won the NCAA Team Championship a year ago, and this year qualified for the season-ending competition again as one of eight team qualifiers. for the 2019 season  Tuesday and earned the No. 2-seed.
 
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 three weeks ago during the qualifying weekend gave UK’s NCAA qualifying score aggregate of 9411.33.
 
Kentucky finished second in the GARC regular-season standings. The Wildcats finished third at the GARC Championships two weeks ago.
 
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.

 
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For the latest on the Kentucky rifle team, follow @UKrifle on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, as well as on the web at UKathletics.com.