A Drive to Win
December 22, 2004 09:25 PM | General
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| Hensil |
Grandson of a gunsmith, a marksman by nature and a West Virginian to the core, Eric Hensil was destined to shoot for the Mountaineer rifle team.
Growing up in Jane Lew, W.Va., where he often enjoyed the family craft of sport shooting and hunting, Hensil had a competitive desire yearning inside of him.
“I have a strong drive to win,” Hensil says. “It’s always been in me.”
That drive is in him now as one of only two members of this year’s reinstated WVU rifle team who competed during the Mountaineers’ last varsity season in 2002-03.
And it was in him when he first pursued the chance to compete in the sport. That was the case in 1997 when Hensil attended the National Hunting and Fishing Day festivities at Stonewall Jackson Lake near his home. At the event the WVU rifle team conducted a demonstration that piqued Hensil’s interest. That was just the spark he needed to fuel his competitive fire.
“I thought that it might be fun to compete and prove my skill against others,” Hensil said. “So I found a junior coach who shot the same shooting discipline and tried out for that team and made it.”
Hensil became captain of the X-terminators, a junior team based out of New Martinsville, W.Va., nearly a two-hour drive from his home. But that didn’t deter Hensil; there was no stopping him from reaching his goal.
Then he got the phone call.
“One of my favorite moments was when I got the phone call saying that I was accepted here and I was going to be on the team,” Hensil says. “I was happy about being accepted to such a prestigious team in the country.”
West Virginia has won 13 national championships since the NCAA first sponsored the sport in 1980, and to be included in that tradition is an honor for Hensil.
“It’s something the state prides itself in,” Hensil says. “Because we’ve been good in the past people in the state are proud of us.”
There is one caveat Hensil addends to his comment.
“But they have an expectation for us to continue that.”
That depends on Hensil and the seven other members of the WVU rifle team who began competition this year after the program was cut as a varsity sport in April of 2003.
During the one-year hiatus Hensil was one of three current varsity team members who competed on the WVU club team. Members of the club team were responsible for team travel, scheduling practice and competition and all other organizing efforts.
“We had to work together or go off into the night,” Hensil says. “Everyone had to work harder and to push harder to make it work.”
Hensil didn’t go off into the night. Neither did junior Brian Launer, the other holdover from the last varsity team. Now they must impress upon this year’s team members how important they are to the program.
“As far as roles are concerned I see mine and Brian’s as making sure that another good foundation is laid for this team so the tradition can continue,” Hensil says. “We have to make sure that the attitudes of the new team members are the same as the ones we had when we were a varsity team, and that’s the attitude that we have a top-notch team and continue to work hard.”
It’s that hard work head coach Marsha Beasley, in her 15th season with the team, believes will bring back the prior success of the program.
“If we continue to have hard workers in the program like Eric,” Beasley says, “there will be a solid future to the program.”
Hensil can be considered a self-made leader of the Mountaineers this year.
While he wasn’t the most skilled shooter on the team his first year as a sophomore, Hensil surprised everyone including himself by winning the 2002 Great America Rifle Conference air rifle championship firing a personal-best 389.
Hensil finished the 2001-02 season with the third-highest air rifle season average of 383 and shot 380 or better in six matches. His junior year he remained consistent with a 383.8 season average but also improved his smallbore scores.
The GARC air rifle title remains one of his most cherished accomplishments.
“I wasn’t expecting that at all,” Hensil says. “A lot of people in the conference were better than me. That day was after NCAA championships and our team shot badly and we did not enter the championships shooting air rifle, just smallbore.
“So I saw it as another chance.”
Hensil has another chance this year with the return of the varsity rifle team—another chance to allow that competitive drive to flourish, another chance to make West Virginia proud.
“Not having the team reminded people in the state how much they enjoyed us,” Hensil adds. “So it kind of gave a rebirth in their eyes.”
Not to mention a rebirth of Hensil’s competitive spirit.
Justin Zackal is a graduate assistant in the WVU sports communications office.
