COLUMBUS, Ohio - First-year shooter
Ryan Anderson fired a season-high in his smallbore relay followed by the best score of the finals to lead the Alaska Nanooks on the first day of the the NCAA Men's and Women's Rifle Championships Friday afternoon at Converse Hall.
The Nanooks, who entered the national championship event being hosted by The Ohio State University ranked fifth, are in fourth place after the first day of shooting with 2312 points. Defending NCAA Champion Kentucky leads the team standings with a 2328, just three points ahead of Army's 2325 and five more than 2010 Champion Texas Christian's 2323. Nevada rounds out the top-five teams, trailing Alaska by six points with 2306.
With a team composed entirely of underclassmen (three sophomores and two freshmen) the Nanooks are right where they wanted to be heading into Saturday's air rifle competition: fourth out of eight teams.
"We're only a couple of points behind second and third (ranked teams) so we're not too bad out of it," said Jordan. "The goal coming in was to be fourth place or better and everyone is anxious for tomorrow and looking forward to seeing where we can go from here."
Anderson tied West Virginia's Petra Zublasing with a 586 in their respective relays, but Zublasing hit the bull's-eye (scored a perfect 10) three more times than Anderson and thus was ranked behind her for the team scoring and standings.
As one of the top-eight shooters on the day, Anderson advanced to the eight-person 10-shot final, where he amassed the best score of 100.9, which propelled him ahead of Zublasing in the final individual rankings in fourth place with 686.9.
"As a freshman he shot huge today - its his personal best," said Jordan, " and then he went in and had a phenomenal final."
Texas Christian's Sarah Scherer and Army's Michael Matthews fired the high-scores of the day with 589 apiece, but Scherer had 31 perfect shots, while Matthews had 25.
In the finals, Scherer notched a 99.6, while Mathews followed with a 98.6.
The Blue and Gold's other three scoring shooters included sophomores
Mike Liuzza (578),
Anna Hjelmevoll (575) and
Julia Redzia (573). While it wasn't the Nanooks best smallbore aggregate of the season, it was six points better than their season average of 2306.2.
Rookie
Mats Eriksson shot a 567 in the second relay but did not count in the team scoring.
The shooters return to action for air gun on Saturday morning, with the first relay scheduled from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. EST, followed by the second relay from 10:30 a.m to 12:30 p.m. The finals will be shot at 1 p.m. EST. Live electronic targets for both relays and the finals, as well as individual and team scores may be found
here.
NCAA.com will have a live video stream available to watch about 10 minutes prior to the start of each relay.
