INDIANAPOLIS – The Alaska Nanooks rifle team is headed to the 2019 NCAA Rifle National Championships. On Tuesday, the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Coed Rifle Committee announced the teams and individual qualifiers for the 2019 championships with Alaska ranking eighth among the eight total teams headed to the Big Dance.

The 2019 NCAA Rifle National Championships will be hosted by the West Virginia University Mountaineers Friday, Mar 8 and Saturday, Mar. 9 at the WVU Coliseum on West Virginia's campus in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Alaska and the other remaining seven teams will compete in both 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 were then added to the aggregate scores from the designated qualifiers to determine the top-eight teams.

Alaska is joined by No. 1 Texas Christian University, No. 2 Kentucky, No. 3 West Virginia, No. 4 Air Force, No. 5 Murray State, No. 6 Navy and No. 7 Army West Point. 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. 8 and individuals and teams will compete in the air rifle event (60 shots) on Saturday, Mar. 9. 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 smallbore and air rifle disciplines, along with two individual national championships 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 coed rifle team, follow @NanooksRifle on Twitter or like the Alaska Nanooks Rifle team page on Facebook.