 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (December 2019) |
| Most recent season or competition: 2024 NCAA Rifle Championships | |
 | |
| Sport | College rifle |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1980 |
| No. of teams | 8 teams, 48 individual shooters |
| Country | United States |
| Most recent champion(s) | Team: Alaska (11) Small-bore: Cecilia Ossi, Nebraska Air rifle: Rylan Kissell, Alaska |
| Official website | NCAA.com |
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-day aggregate scoring of the smallbore competition and air rifle competition. The national championship rounds are contested annually in mid-March. West Virginia (19) and Alaska (11) have combined to win 30 of the 43 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.[1][a] 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 TCU Horned Frogs, who won their fourth national championship at the WVU Coliseum, located at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia, on March 8 and 9, 2024. West Virginia's Mary Tucker won the 2024 individual title in small-bore. WVU junior Gavin Barnick won the air rifle national championship, besting Kentucky's Braden Peiser. In the air rifle qualification round, Alaska's Elijah Spencer fired a score of 600 (a perfect score), with 57x - one X behind the NCAA record set by Nanook Rylan Kissell at the 2023 NCAA Rifle Championship.
- ^ "Bylaw 20.9.6: Sports Sponsorship" (PDF). 2020–21 NCAA Division I Manual. NCAA. August 7, 2020. pp. 406–07. Retrieved March 14, 2021. This bylaw also applies in Divisions II and III, but is numbered differently in those divisions' manuals.
- ^ "Bylaw 15.5.3.1.1: Maximum Equivalency Limits, Men's Sports" (PDF). 2020–21 NCAA Division I Manual. NCAA. August 7, 2020. p. 222. Retrieved March 14, 2021.
- ^ "Bylaw 15.4.2.1.1: Maximum Equivalency Limits, Men's Sports" (PDF). 2020–21 NCAA Division II Manual. NCAA. August 7, 2020. pp. 166–67. Retrieved March 14, 2021.
- ^ "Bylaw 15.4.2.1.1.1: Maximum Equivalency Limits, Men's Sports, Overall Limit" (PDF). 2020–21 NCAA Division II Manual. NCAA. August 7, 2020. p. 167. Retrieved March 14, 2021.
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