Post date: Sep 29, 2014 3:27:10 PM
By Danny Martin DMARTIN@NEWSMINER.COM
FAIRBANKS — The Alaska Nanooks rifle team, last season’s NCAA runners-up, are ranked No. 2 in the Collegiate Rifle Coaches Association preseason poll that was released Thursday.
The Nanooks have 10 national championships in their history, ranking second behind defending NCAA champion West Virginia, which owns 15 national team titles. The Mountaineers, of Morgantown, West Virginia, also are ranked first in the CRCA preseason poll.
“We are coming back stronger than last season, and I think it’s going to be pretty close between us and West Virginia,” Nanooks head coach Dan Jordan said Thursday in a University of Alaska Fairbanks press release.
“It’s going to come down to the NCAA Championships,” Jordan added.
The Nanooks are playing host to the 2015 NCAA Championships in the UAF Patty Center on March 13-14.
“Our team wants to be ranked No. 1,’’ Jordan said. “I hope we use this (No. 2 ranking in CRCA preseason poll) as a motivation to push on to where we expect to be.”
The Nanooks return a majority of last season’s roster, led by senior Ryan Anderson, a three-time All-American in 2013-14.
Anderson earned National Rifle Association Collegiate First Team All-America honors in the smallbore and air rifle at last season’s NCAA Championships in Murray, Kentucky, and garnered First Team CRCA All-America laurels.
The biological sciences major from Great Falls, Virginia, also placed fourth in air rifle at the NCAA Championships and was the smallbore champion and air rifle runner-up at the Patriot Rifle Conference Championships last February in Columbus, Ohio.
Alaska also returns individual national champion junior Tim Sherry; three-time All-American senior Mats Eriksson; junior Lorelie Stanfield, a Lathrop High School graduate who was a qualifier for this year’s Interior Shooting Sport Federation World Championships; and redshirt freshman Sagen Maddalena, a fellow ISSF World Championship qualifier and the Nanooks’ team most valuable player last season.
The Nanooks open the regular season against the University of Tennessee-Martin on Oct. 11 and 12 in the E.F. Horton Range at the Patty Center. Both matches are scheduled to start at 9 a.m.