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-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 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, on March 11 and 12, 2022. Kentucky's Will Shaner 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
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.
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.^[5]

Team titles

West Virginia

Alaska

TCU

Tennessee Tech

Kentucky

Murray
State

Army

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19, 11, 4, 3, 2, 1

Appearances by Team

Key

CH National Champion
RU National Runner-up
Numbers indicate the placement of the team in that tournament beyond second

Individual titles

Schools in italics no longer compete in NCAA rifle.

Footnotes

^ While all members of NCAA Divisions I and II are limited to the equivalent of 3.6 full scholarships in rifle per school in any academic year,^[2]^[3] Division II members are also limited to 60 scholarship equivalents in men's sports apart from football and basketball.^[4]

External links

^ "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.
^ Rifle Champs Record (PDF), NCAA, 2015
^ "NC Rifle Results | NCAA.com". www.ncaa.com.

NCAA Sports: Men's & Women's Rifle