Mindy Miles

Former five-time All-American and USA Shooting National Team member Mindy Miles is in her first season in charge of the Husker rifle team after being named head coach on May 24, 2021.

Miles is the seventh head coach to lead the Husker rifle program and took over after serving as the assistant coach for the Huskers for two years. She helped the Huskers qualify for the NCAA Championships both seasons, including a sixth-place finish at the 2021 NCAA Championships in March.

Miles served as an assistant coach under Rachel Martin since 2019, as she played an instrumental part in the Huskers’ accomplishments the past two years. In that time, Nebraska posted its four best teams scores since the current format began in 2004, including a school-record mark of 4,707 at the 2020 NCAA Qualifier.

During Miles’ first year as head coach, Cecelia Ossi tied the Nebraska range air rifle record of 597 and placed ninth in the smallbore at the NCAA Championships. She also set a school record for smallbore average over the course of a season with a 586.3. The team scored the second-highest smallbore score in school history in its match against UTEP. Ossi earned CRCA Second-Team Smallbore All-America honors, and Madelynn Erickson earned CRCA Honorable Mention Smallbore All-America honors.

The Huskers also held a strong academic standing under Miles. Ossi, along with Emily Cheramie, Elena Flake, Payton Fry and Mackenzie Strauch all earned CRCA Scholastic All-America awards. Cheramie, Ossi, Flake, Erickson and Kinga Aletto all earned Academic All-Big Ten Awards. Five Huskers earned academic medallions under Miles - Flake and Ossi received gold medallions for earning a GPA greater than 3.75, Cheramie earned a silver medallion with a GPA greater than 3.50 and Aletto and Erickson earned bronze medallions for a GPA greater than 3.00. All seven 2021-22 rifle athletes were part of the Tom Osborne Citizenship Team.

In 2021, Cheramie earned three CRCA All-America awards under Miles’ tutelage, becoming the first shooter in school history to earn three All-America awards in the same season. Cheramie, who was named the 2021 Great America Rifle Conference Senior of the Year, was one of four Huskers to earn All-America honors the past two years, joining 2020 recipients Elena Flake, Hana Musser and Macey Way. The Huskers also finished third in the 2020 Great America Rifle Conference (GARC), while Cheramie and Way finished first and third, respectively, in the smallbore.

Off the range, NU had 14 CRCA Scholastic All-Americans in two seasons, including all six competitors on the Huskers’ 2021 roster, and 29 spots on the Nebraska Scholar-Athlete Honor Roll over the last three semesters. In May of 2021, the program took home the women’s Herman Team GPA award, signifying the highest GPA for any Husker women’s program on campus, posting a 3.744 GPA in the previous two semesters.

As a competitor at TCU, Miles was a three-time first-team NRA All-American in the air rifle (2016-18) and two-time NRA All-American in smallbore (2017-18). As a senior, she placed fifth in the air rifle and added a third-place NCAA finish in the smallbore, leading TCU to a third-place team finish at the NCAA Championships. Miles ranked second nationally in the air rifle (597.4) and seventh in smallbore (583.7) during her senior year. Miles led the nation in air rifle average (596.53) in 2016-17, including a score of 599 at Alaska on Oct. 8. She finished fourth in the air rifle at the 2017 NCAA Championships with a score of 596. She was the NCAA air rifle runner-up as a sophomore in 2016, while posting a season average of 594. She added the 2016 NCAA Sportsmanship Award.

As a freshman in 2015, Miles became just the fifth shooter in NCAA history and the second at TCU to shoot a perfect 600, which came in the air rifle at the Patriot Rifle Conference Championships on Feb. 8 to help the Horned Frogs to the team title. Miles was a four-time Patriot Rifle Conference champion during her TCU career.  She added a second perfect 600 against Nebraska and Memphis on Oct. 28, 2017.

Miles represented Team USA in competition dating back to the 2014 World Championships before retiring from competitive shooting in 2020. A two-time World Championships competitor for the United States (2014, 2018), she secured a quota spot for the United States at the Olympic Games in Tokyo by winning gold in the air rifle at the 2018 Championship of the Americas. Miles’ score of 248.4 highlighted a 1-2 sweep in the event. Miles won a silver medal in the air rifle at the 2019 Pan American Games.

Originally from Weatherford, Texas, Miles earned a silver medal in air rifle and a bronze in smallbore at the 2013 Junior Olympics. She was a Junior World Cup finalist in Suhl, Germany in 2014.

Miles earned her bachelor’s degree from TCU in May of 2018 after majoring in strategic communications with an emphasis in public relations and advertising and a minor in business. She was named the TCU Breakout Athlete of the Year in 2015 and was the TCU Pop Boone Award recipient in 2017.