Men's and Women's Rifle | 2/22/2017 6:51:00 PM

NCAA Release

FAIRBANKS, Alaska – The Alaska Nanooks rifle team is headed to the 2017 NCAA Rifle Championships. On Wednesday, the National Collegiate Athletic Association Men's and Women's Rifle Committee announced the teams and individual qualifiers for the 2017 national championships with Alaska ranking fifth among the eight teams to qualify.

The 2017 NCAA Rifle Championships will be hosted by the Ohio State University and will take place Mar. 10-11 at the French Field House on the OSU campus in Columbus, Ohio.

"I'm very proud of the team today, as we learned we qualified for the NCAA Championships," interim head coach Layne Lewis said on Wednesday. "We have really come together as a team these past few weeks and have put up some great scores. Everyone is really excited for the Championships this year and I am confident that we will perform our best in Columbus. All the schools competing in the championships this year are also shooting really great right now, which will make for some really close matches and a fun and exciting event."

Alaska and the other remaining seven teams will compete in both the smallbore three-position and air rifle events and were selected based on the average of the three highest regular-season aggregate scores with no more than one match at any given site. The average of the highest three scores was then added to the aggregate scores from the designated qualifiers to determine the top-eight teams.

Alaska is joined by No. 1 West Virginia, No. 2 Texas Christian, No. 3 Murray State, No. 4 Air Force, No. 6 Kentucky, No. 7 Ohio State and No. 8 Nebraska. Along with the eight qualifying teams, the NCAA has chosen four individual competitors to compete in the smallbore discipline and four individuals to compete in the air rifle event. The individual shooters are participants who posted a qualifying score high enough to compete in the NCAA Championships but their team as a whole did not. In total, 48 competitors will participate in the championships, with 40 of those shooters coming from qualifying teams.

Individuals and teams will compete in the smallbore three-position (60 shots) on Friday, Mar. 10 and individuals and teams will compete in the air rifle event (60 shots) on Saturday, Mar. 11. The overall team champion will be determined by combining the smallbore and air rifle team scores into one aggregate score for each institution.

There will also be a team national champion in both the smallbore and air rifle disciplines, along with two individual national champions in smallbore and air rifle, as well.

The Nanooks will be competing for their 11th NCAA team title after last winning the national championship in 2008. Since becoming an NCAA sport in 1980, Alaska has won 10 national titles and has been the runner-up on seven occasions.  Furthermore, Alaska has boasted 16 individual NCAA Champions, with Tim Sherry ('16) being the most recent Nanook to do so in the 2014 NCAA Championships.

For more information on the Alaska Nanooks men's and women's rifle team, follow @NanooksRifle on Twitter or like the Alaska Nanooks team page on Facebook.