Rifle Team Captures Match Title

Lincoln -- Nebraska hosted its first ever rifle match on Saturday, Dec. 4 at the Military and Naval Sciences (ROTC) Building competing against Missouri-Kansas City, Texas Christian and Wyoming. The Huskers won the match with a combined score of 5,974, while Wyoming took second with 5,793.

Coach Karen Anthony said she was excited to host the match and was pleased with how it ran.

"The match went really well," she said. "It was a lot of fun to host a match and a lot of fun to shoot. I really like being a part of a team where we can hold a good match and host the teams well."

Husker freshmen took the first three places in the air rifle competition, led by the steady hand of Nicole Allaire. Allaire, who hails from Kearny, N.J., shot a 393 out of a possible 400 to claim her fourth air rifle title of the season. Amanda Trujillo took second firing a 387, while Victoria Ridge took third with a 386. Sophomore Terim Richards rounded out the team scoring shooting a 372, which placed her fifth overall.

"The women did real well, particularly in air rifle," Anthony said. "Nicole fired a 393 which compares with some of her best scores. They all shot very, very well. Terim was down a little bit from what she is capable of shooting, but she is still shooting good scores."

Allaire also ran away with the smallbore title, her fourth of the season, firing a 1,157 out of a possible 1,200. Ridge took third with a 1,104, Trujillo fifth with 1,094 and sophomore Rachel Spiry shot a 1,081 to take eighth.

Anthony said although the team won the match, they still have a lot of work to do.

"We made some big mistakes today shooting smallbore," she said. "Quite frankly, our scores should have been higher than they were. But we're still headed in the right direction."

Although the team did not shoot as well as it was capable of, Anthony said there were things the team could take from the experience.

"Every time you shoot a match you get a lot of experience with shooting so there's never a time, even if you don't do as well as you'd like to, that you don't gain positive things from the match. All of the women did that today."

Nebraska does not shoot again until January 15 when the team will travel to Colorado Springs, Colo., to take on Alaska, Texas and the U.S. Air Force Academy.