Individual Smallbore Results
Team Smallbore Results
Interview with Coach Jordan
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Despite solid all-around performances from its five shooters, the Alaska Nanooks were edged out by defending NCAA champion Texas Christian for the smallbore national title on the first day of the NCAA Championships. They are in second place heading into Saturday's air rifle competition and will look to upset the Horned Frogs bid for a second straight title, while capturing their 11th overall.
The Nanooks team score of 2,316 tied
West Virginia's mark but the blue and gold won the tiebreaker on most center shots (10s), 114-104.
"We're sitting a lot better than other teams were coming in because they had athletes that struggled todays, while ours did what they were capable of," said head coach Dan Jordan. "They talked about it a lot last night and when they got down here they really stuck to their plan of shooting what we should - today we were right around our season average and we're right where we needed to be."
Alaska led the eight-team competition after the first two relays but they could not hold their challengers at bay. Down the stretch the Nanooks needed two 10s to take the title but fell short in their quest, making room for TCU to beat them by the smallest of margins.
Sophomore Ryan Anderson (Great Falls, Va./Biology) fired a 586 in the first relay and was one of just three shooters (out of 46) on the day to score a perfect 200 from the prone position.
He led all shooters after two relays but the competition heated up from there with several world-class shooters taking to the line in the third and bumping him down to fourth heading into the eight-person, 10-shot final to determine the individual champion.
Kentucky's Henri Junghanel and West Virginia's Petra Zublasing tied with matching 589s, while TCU's Sarah Scherer was two points ahead of Anderson with a 588 leading into the final.
Anderson shot the high score of the final of 100.0 for a combined score of 686.0, but it wasn't enough to propel him past his fierce competitors as Zublasing was crowned the individual champion with a 688.3 on the day, followed by Junghanel's 687.8 and Scherer's 686.7.
"Ryan had a great score today and the high final," Jordan said. "He was the only shooter in the final for us again this year."
"The top three shooters are world-class and shooting very well. Ryan finished fourth behind two Olympians (Zublasing for Italy and Scherer for U.S.A.) and a World Cup Final medalist (Junghanel). He's proving himself to be one of the top shooters in the country."
Sophomore and team captain Mats Eriksson (Malung, Sweden/Business Management) was two points shy of making the final, as he fired a 578 on the day, finishing 11th in the individual standings.
The rest of the Nanooks scoring squad included junior Dustin Chesebro (Laramie, Wy./Engineering) finished 15th with a 577, junior Michael Liuzza (New Orleans, La./Business Administration) was 22nd with a 575 and senior Cole Bures, whose score was not included in the team aggregate, was 42nd with a 568.
The teams will battle in the air gun competition tomorrow starting at 8 a.m. EST with the first of two relays. The 2013 air rifle champion will be crowned following the second relay at 10:45 a.m. EST, while the eight-person 10-shot final will commence at 1:45 p.m. EST to deterimine the individual air gun champion. All the action can be followed live via the electronic targets or live video on NCAA.com.
