Full Results Individual Final Results
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MURRAY, Ky. – Competing at the first NCAA Rifle Championships of his career, sophomore
Tim Sherry (Highlands Ranch, Colo./Mechanical Engineering) was staring at an individual crown through the sights of his smallbore.
He maintained a top-3 position through the kneeling and prone position but moved up to the top spot in the standing portion. Entering the final shot, he and West Virginia's
Garrett Spurgeon were separated by four-tenth of a point.
"I did exactly what I wanted to in prone and kneeling because I usually struggle in those but I knew I could pull it together in standing," Sherry said. "I was shooting it really well until the last three of four shots and I was pretty nervous heading to the end."
After Spurgeon turned in a 7.6, Sherry didn't need a glamorous score to take the title and his 7.7 was more than enough to claim his first national title by a half point (452.1-451.6) on Friday afternoon at the Pat Spurgin Rifle Range and CFSB Center.
I'm still kind of in shock about it," Sherry said. "It's an awesome feeling to be able to pull out one of these goals I had coming in to this event. Hopefully I can finish up the championship with the rest of the goals I came here with."
As a team, Alaska sits in second place in the eight-team field following the smallbore portion of the championships after it fired a 2321. Sherry led the squad in the 60-shot match with a 586 to go with his 35 center shots to finish third, setting him up for the final.
Junior
Ryan Anderson (Great Falls, Va./Biological Sciences) was second for Alaska with a 579, followed by senior
Mike Liuzza (New Orleans, La./Business Administration) and junior
Mats Eriksson (Malung, Sweden/Business Administration), who each fired 578s. Sophomore
Lorelie Stanfield (Fairbanks, Alaska/English) rounded out the squad's day with a 576 in the three-position match.
The Nanooks trail defending champion West Virginia by 17 as the Mountaineers had all four scoring shooters first at least a 581, led by
Ziva Dvorsak's 588, which led all 44 shooters Friday. WVU placed a championships-best three student-athletes in the individual final.
Alaska is one point ahead of third-place Memphis (2320) and five up on Kentucky (2316). Rounding out the rest of the team field from fifth to eighth are Nebraska (2313), Texas Christian (2309), Jacksonville State (2306) and the United States Military Academy (2299).
"We have plenty of motivation [heading to tomorrow]," Sherry said. "We're focused on ourselves and going to put together the best air gun we can tomorrow. Today is over, it's an awesome outcome for myself but at the end of the day it's all over so we need to look forward to tomorrow."
The championships resume Saturday at 9 a.m. CDT with the air rifle match. Fans can watch all relays
live at NCAA.com and
live targets are also available through Murray State University.
