The 1980

NCAA Rifle Championship The NCAA Rifle Championship is an annual co-educational rifle national collegiate championship sponsored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The tournament includes an individual and team championships consisting of the two- ...

was the first annual tournament to determine the national champion of co-ed

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

collegiate

rifle shooting Shooting sports is a group of competitive and recreational sporting activities involving proficiency tests of accuracy, precision and speed in shooting — the art of using ranged weapons, mainly small arms (firearms and airguns, in forms such as ...

. The championship was held at the ETSU Athletic Center at

East Tennessee State University East Tennessee State University (ETSU) is a public research university in Johnson City, Tennessee. Although it is part of the State University and Community College System of Tennessee, the university is governed by an institutional Board of Tr ...

Johnson City, Tennessee Johnson City is a city in Washington, Carter, and Sullivan counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee, mostly in Washington County. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 71,046, making it the eighth largest city in Tennessee. John ...

during March 1980. Prior to 1980, a collegiate rifle championship was held yearly by the

National Rifle Association The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is a gun rights advocacy group based in the United States. Founded in 1871 to advance rifle marksmanship, the modern NRA has become a prominent Gun politics in the United States, gun rights ...

Tennessee Tech Tennessee Technological University, commonly referred to as Tennessee Tech, is a public research university in Cookeville, Tennessee, United States. It was formerly known as Tennessee Polytechnic Institute, and before that as University of Dixie ...

, with a team score of 6,201, claimed their first national title.

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the Bur ...

finished in second with 6,150. The Golden Eagles were coached by James Newkirk.

Rod Fitz-Randolph Roderick Fitz-Randolph (born January 21, 1959) is an American former sports shooter. He competed in the men's 10 metre air rifle event at the 1988 Summer Olympics The 1988 Summer Olympics (), officially known as the Games of the XXIV Oly ...

, from

, claimed the individual titles for both smallbore and air rifle.

Qualification

Since there is only one national collegiate championship for rifle shooting, all

rifle programs (whether from Division I, Division II, or

Division III In sport, the Third Division, also called Division 3, Division Three, or Division III, is often the third-highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below. Association football *Belgian Thir ...

) were eligible. A total of 10 teams ultimately contested this championship.

Results

*Scoring: The championship consisted of 120 shots by each competitor in smallbore and 40 shots per competitor in air rifle.

Team title

Individual events

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:NCAA Rifle Championship NCAA Rifle Championship

NCAA Rifle Championships The NCAA Rifle Championship is an annual co-educational rifle national collegiate championship sponsored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The tournament includes an individual and team championships consisting of the two ...

1980 in shooting sports