Post date: Feb 9, 2014 6:47:38 PM
By Tim O’Donnell TODONNELL@NEWSMINER.COM
FAIRBANKS — The Alaska Nanooks showed why they are ranked third in the country Saturday at the first ever Patriot Rifle Conference Championship. The Nanooks won the smallbore competition by 33 points over Texas Christian University at the Lt. Hugh W. Wylie Range at Ohio State University.
The Nanooks took three of the top four individual spots to finish with a team score of 2,339. TCU followed at 2,306 and Ohio State took third at 2,305.
The six-team Patriot Rifle Conference also includes Air Force, Nevada and Texas El-Paso, who couldn’t make the trip because of mechanical issues with their plane.
Ryan Anderson outlasted seven other shooters in the individual, knock-style competition to win the PRC individual smallbore title.
The junior shot a 587 in the team competition.
“Ryan’s really stepped and done well in the finals in the NCAA Championship the last two years,” head coach Dan Jordan said in a University of Alaska Fairbanks press release. “It was really fun to see the final with three of the eight being from Alaska and it was really close at the end for the last couple shots.”
Sophomore Lorelie Stanfield finished second behind Anderson and Tim Sherry finished fourth. Ohio State’s Amanda Luoma finished third.
“To see us have three of the final four, that was great,” Jordan said. “Tim made a really strong comeback and Lorelie almost caught Ryan. She was really pushing him and wanted to be in the top spot on the team.”
Sherry led the Nanooks with a 588 in the team competition while Stanfield tied with Anderson at 587. Junior Mats Eriksson shot a 577 and senior Mike Liuzza shot 572 to round out the Nanooks team score.
“Going into smallbore, there was a lot of confidence,” Jordan said. “Ryan, Lorelie and Tim had top-class scores and are sitting really well. Tomorrow, going into air gun, we talked about loosening up and having some fun in the first year of conference and trusting in our air gun abilities.”
The conference championship continues today with air rifle. Shooting begins at 4 a.m. AST.