Last weekend, Pack rifle faced a daunting challenge at the Great American Rifle Conference. State took on some of the best teams in the country in Oxford, Miss. and shot a 2,297 in air-rifle and 2,248 in smallbore, which was only good for seventh of seven teams.
Two freshmen led the way for State at GARC. Bryan Cross led the team in smallbore and compiled a total score of 1,147, his best output of the year. William Teller was close behind with 1,134.
Apart from rankings, one disadvantage the Pack faced was in preparation. It is the only team in the GARC that doesn’t practice with electronic targets.
“It’s a bit of a disadvantage because you don’t get to practice on them as much as the others do, and you can always do better on electronic targets than on paper targets,” senior Samantha Bullard said.
West Virginia, last year’s NCAA champs, finished first in the tournament. The Mountaineers’ Nicco Campriani, a junior who represented Italy at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and took 12th in air rifle, swept the individual competitions.
State goes from being the unquestioned underdog to “playing against themselves” for divisional dominance at the Southeast Air Rifle Conference, which starts this Saturday in Anniston, Ala.
“We’re by far the strongest team in that conference,” coach Keith Miller said. “Barring some major unforeseen event, we should easily win conference for the fourth year in a row, which is really important to our seniors.”
Rifle does not have the benefit of benches and interchangeable players. The team must declare its representatives before shooting begins. Senior Kat Seigert said there’s a good-natured but “pretty intense” rivalry between her teammates to see who will earn the right to compete in SEARCs.
Picking the right group of shooters is tricky business. Miller said if the coaching staff had figured out who was at the top of their game last weekend, the team might have fared better.
“It’s nice to peak at the right time, and that happens sometimes, but you can’t always count on it,” Miller said. “If you look at it from that perspective, you can’t be disappointed.”
Seigert said several teams in the SEARC take the competition less seriously than State does, though that is quickly changing.
“This is fun for them, while this is a passion for us,” Seigert said. “Plus, they don’t shoot smallbore, which is an advantage for us. Smallbore exaggerates a lot of the problems you have in air, which you never would have seen if you just shoot air.”
It’s anyone’s guess who will step up big for the Pack this weekend. No one athlete has dominated competition this year, with a new shooter leading the team each week. According to Miller, senior Seigert set a school record in air rifle earlier this year, which freshman Teller later broke. Shortly after that, Seigert broke it again.
Some combination of youth and veterans will be on the hunt for the school’s fourth straight SEARC title. State’s closest competitor is The Citadel, but Miller said State is “safely the favorite.”
“It’s always been sort of a disappointment, in a way, that they aren’t close to us and pushing us. I guess it’s the way the people in GARC feels about our team,” Seigert said. “There are teams coming up in SEARC and doing very well. We may have competition in the next few years.”
