The NCAA Rifle Championship is an annual co-educational

rifle A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting, with a barrel that has a helical pattern of grooves ( rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus on accuracy, rifles are typically designed to be held with ...

national collegiate championship sponsored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The tournament includes an individual and team championships consisting of the two-day aggregate scoring of the smallbore competition and

air rifle An air gun or airgun is a gun that fires projectiles pneumatically with compressed air or other gases that are mechanically pressurized ''without'' involving any chemical reactions, in contrast to a firearm, which pressurizes gases ''chem ...

competition. The national championship rounds are contested annually in mid-March. West Virginia (19) and Alaska (10) have combined to win 29 of the 42 team championships. Unlike many NCAA sports, only one National Collegiate championship is held each season with teams from Division I, Division II, and Division III competing together. Under NCAA rules, sports teams that include both men and women are designated as men's teams for purposes of sports sponsorship and scholarship limitations. Nonetheless, rifle has been a coed sport since 1980, a year before the NCAA began holding championships in women's sports. Schools sponsoring rifle may field anywhere from one to three teams. If a school chooses to sponsor more than one team, it may have any combination of men's, women's, and coed teams. Two schools field men's and women's teams, and three field women's and coed teams. The current team national champions are the Kentucky Wildcats, who won their fourth national championship at Clune Arena, located within the Cadet Field House on the grounds of the United States Air Force Academy near

Colorado Springs, Colorado Colorado Springs is a home rule municipality in, and the county seat of, El Paso County, Colorado, United States. It is the largest city in El Paso County, with a population of 478,961 at the 2020 United States Census, a 15.02% increase since ...

, on March 11 and 12, 2022. Kentucky's

Will Shaner William Shaner (born April 25, 2001, in Colorado Springs, Colorado) is an American sports shooter. He has competed in national and international competitions, most notably he won the gold medal in the men's 10 metre air rifle event at the 20 ...

won the 2022 individual title in small-bore. Air Force freshman Scott Rockett won the air rifle national championship, the first ever for the Academy.

Programs

Conferences

* Great America Rifle Conference *

Mid-Atlantic Rifle Conference The Mid-Atlantic Rifle Conference (MAC) is a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rifle-only conference. The MAC was established in 1978 for schools that sponsor NCAA sanctioned varsity rifle teams, but do not have rifle as a sponsored ...

* Ohio Valley Conference, the only Division I all-sports conference that sponsored rifle before the SoCon added it in 2016–17. * Patriot Rifle Conference * Southern Conference; resumed the sport in 2016–17 after a 30-year hiatus.

Champions

*Prior to NCAA sponsorship in 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 ...

. *From 1980 to 2004, the championship consisted of 120 shots by each competitor in smallbore, and 40 shots per competitor in air rifle. Since 2005, the championship has consisted of 60 shots for both smallbore and air rifle, equaling a total of 120 shots per team member.http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/rifle_champs_records/2012-13/2012-13_rifle_rec.pdf

Programs

Conferences

Champions

Team titles

Appearances by Team

Individual titles

See also

Footnotes

External links