The rifle team took first place in its competition Saturday against UTEP and Nevada-Reno, giving the team its third first-place finish of the season. TCU finished first in both air rifle and smallbore, junior Rebecca Upjohn said.
“There weren’t any setbacks for our team,” Upjohn said. “The weekend went very smoothly for the TCU shooters.”
Upjohn is a member of the white team, where members don’t travel unless they qualify, but was able to travel with the purple team this weekend because she has been shooting well, said Karen Monez, head coach of the rifle team.
“This weekend was a really good performance with the highest team scores for air rifle and smallbore and world-class individual scores,” Monez said.
For both air rifle and smallbore, there were four designated shooters whose individual scores were combined to create the aggregated scores, Monez said.
The designated air rifle team was comprised of all freshmen, including Simone Riford, Lauren Sullivan, Erin Lorenzen and Emily Paper, Monez said.
The members’ aggregated score was a 2349.
The smallbore team included Riford, Sullivan, Lorenzen and sophomore Tanya Gorin, Monez said.
The smallbore teams’ aggregated score for smallbore was a 2301.
Shooters who are not on either of the designated teams shot for individual scores, Monez said.
“Anytime a shooter has a score of over 580 in air rifle, that’s impressive,” Monez said. “We had two scores in the 590s, and all others were in the 580s.”
Sullivan, Paper, Lorenzen, Riford and senior Nikki LeCompte all shot impressive individual scores, Monez said.
“This was our third time to compete against UNR and UTEP,” Monez said. “We have beat UTEP all three times and UNR twice.”
Not only did the team win the competition, they also set another team record for TCU’s aggregated scores, Gorin said.
Gorin said this weekend did not go as well for her as she had hoped.
“I’ve been getting off to a rough start this season, and this wasn’t my best tournament, personally,” Gorin said.
The tournament was held in Austin because it was a neutral location for the three teams, Gorin said.
The next competition is in West Point, N.Y., where the team will compete against the United States Military Academy and the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.