NU rifle beats Air Force, faces NC State and Army next week

Women are better shooters than men. At least, that was the case Friday for the Nebraska rifle team.

NU's all-women squad topped Air Force's testosterone-fueled rifle team by a score of 4,629 points to 4,614.

Senior Amanda Jeffries said she agreed with the sentiment that women tend to shoot better than their male counterparts to a point, as was proved this weekend.

"When you first start out, (women) are usually better, but it usually evens out," Jeffries said.

College rifle teams are usually co-ed, but Air Force happened to be all-male. Jeffries said she was satisfied with her team's season-opening effort.

"It was a good start score-wise," she said. "Win or loss, it's an ego boost because they take the scores and combine them for the team total."

The rifle team also took on defending national champions West Virginia on Sunday. West Virginia came in with all of their starters from last year's NCAA title team.

"We knew it would be a tough match going into it," NU coach Morgan Hicks said. "We pushed hard and knew what we were capable of doing, and we definitely put up a good showing against them."

Though the Huskers lost to the Mountaineers, they still feel they're off to a good start at 1-1.

"I think we did really well," Jeffries said. "Even though they still beat us, it wasn't by a whole lot."

NU lost by 26 team points, which is considered a medium margin in rifle. Losing by 20 points or less is considered a close match.

The team scored 4,634 points on the match, which was higher than their Air Force win total and was a higher total than any of NU's matches last year.

The two teams took each other on in two different categories, smallbore rifle and air rifle. Only four competitors' scores counted toward the team total for each category.

For the smallbore rifle category, each team shoots from a distance of 50 feet with a .22 rifle. Each person then takes 20 shots from three different positions: lying down, standing or kneeling.

Air rifle is shot with compressed air from the standing position at a distance of 33 feet. Since air rifle is shot from strictly the standing position, the shooter will take 60 shots while standing instead of the 20 shots in the three different positions.

The maximum points a person can receive while shooting with each gun is 600 – 10 points for a bull's-eye, with scores decreasing from there depending on the distance from the center.

NU's rifle team will look to improve upon its start next weekend when the team flies to West Point, N.Y., to take on NC State and Army.

chrisdorwart@dailynebraskan.com