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Junior Garrett Spurgeon placed fourth in today's smallbore individual final with a 432.9 score at the 2015 NCAA Rifle Championships.
(Photo by Jason Colquhoun)
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MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - The No. 1-ranked West Virginia University rifle team opened the defense of its back-to-back national championships with a 2319 smallbore score, today, at the 2015 NCAA Rifle Championships, held at the E.F. Horton Rifle Range, in Fairbanks, Alaska.
WVU (11-1, 8-0 GARC) sits in second place after day one of the championships. No. 2 Alaska-Fairbanks won the smallbore discipline with a 2331 aggregate score and holds a 12-point lead going into tomorrow’s air rifle competition.
“Our score is not what we would have liked it to be,” coach Jon Hammond said. “It’s definitely below our average. I thought our performance was good today, however, and all five of the team members shot their match how I would want them to shoot it.”
Senior Ziva Dvorsak and junior Garrett Spurgeon paced the Mountaineers with 583 relay scores. Dvorsak placed fifth with 30 center shots (196 kneeling, 193 prone, 194 standing), while Spurgeon placed seventh with 26 (191 kneeling, 199 prone, 193 standing). The score matched Dvorsak’s season high and was one shot higher than Spurgeon’s season average.
Junior Michael Bamsey followed with 581 (192 kneeling, 197 prone, 192 standing), placing eighth, while seniors Maren Prediger and Thomas Kyanko scored 572 in the relay.
Bamsey, Dvorsak, Spurgeon and Kyanko counted toward the team score.
“They were all patient and disciplined,” said Hammond. “They all had a couple struggles in the match. While it’s not the outcome and score we would have liked, they did their best and put everything into it. We have to take that into tomorrow and put our all into that, too.”
Three Mountaineers - Dvorsak, Spurgeon and Bamsey - competed in today’s individual final. It was the second straight NCAA smallbore final for Spurgeon and Dvorsak, and the for Bamsey.
Spurgeon placed fourth in the final with 432.9, and Dvorsak (411.9) and Bamsey (398.2) followed in sixth and seventh, respectively.
Nebraska’s Rachel Martin claimed the smallbore individual title with 453.3. Alaska’s Ryan Anderson (452.6) and No. 5 Kentucky’s Connor Davis (441.3) completed the podium places.
“Even the three who made the final probably aren’t satisfied with the results,” Hammond said. “They all worked hard and did a lot of really good things well. It was nice to have so many in the final. Garrett coming away with fourth place showed the consistency he has in the smallbore discipline. The finals are very difficult to come out on the top and win, and for Garrett to get it done today was good.”
Entering tomorrow’s air rifle competition, No. 4 Nebraska sits in third with 2311, trailing the Mountaineers by eight points. No. 6 TCU is in fourth (2305), and No. 3 Jacksonville State is in fifth (2302).
WVU looks to defend last year’s air rifle title, won with a 2367 team score, tomorrow at the championships. The team most recently shot a nation-record 2386 air rifle score at the GARC Championships, on March 1, at Mississippi’s Patricia C. Lamar Readiness Center in Oxford, Mississippi.
The Mountaineers, the 2015 Great American Rifle Conference (GARC) regular-season and six-time defending postseason champions, shoot for a nation-best 17th NCAA title at 12 p.m. EDT Saturday at the Patty Center.
