Four years after its inception, the Rhody Rifle team has now placed third in this year’s national preseason ranking for club sport rifle teams, and received honors at the National Intermediate Smallbore Rifle Championships last year.
Fourth-year Sophia Wood, president and co-captain of the team, said that URI has been the top club sport team in the Mid-Atlantic Rifle Conference for the last few years, beating out a few NCAA programs at nationals as well.
“It’s a really small sport,” Wood said. “It’s smallbore and air rifle.”
For competitions, which run from Oct. through March, Wood said the competitive team works together to accumulate 600 points per person out of 60 total shots. Smallbore shots are done with 22-caliber rifles.
“We’ll do standing, kneeling and prone, and you get 20 shots at each position,” Wood said. “Each shot is graded out of a scale of 0 to 10.”
Air rifle, which uses pellets, has 60 standing shots.
Co-captain Alexander Travison said that in competitions, Rhody Rifle will bring five of their ten competition shooters. The four best scores will get counted toward the team’s total score.
Typical early matches, like this season’s first match against MIT on Saturday, Oct. 17, will be one-on-one, according to Wood.
“Toward the end of the season, it’s multiple teams and not just one-on-one,” Travison said. “That’s the Mid-Atlantic Conference Championships at the end.”
The Rhody Rifle team is currently split into two divisions; a competitive team and a training team.
“We have a bunch of other club members that are practicing with us that are hoping to either be on the club team someday or just practice the sport recreationally,” Wood said.
One of Wood’s goals for this year is to bring up some more members on the training team to the competition team.
“The sport is open for everyone,” Wood said.
The team practices at Elite Indoor Gun Range in South Kingstown, where the returners teach the new members the three main positions used in smallbore rifle shooting.
“Right now, we have a bunch of new people, so we’re starting with prone,” Wood said. “As everyone improves, we introduce the other more complicated positions to them.”
Wood and Travison, both Rhode Island natives, got introduced to riflery when they attended the state championships for the high school rifle league at Elite Indoor Gun Range.
Now a first-year graduate student, Travison said he is most looking forward to nationals at the end of March for this upcoming season.
“It’s always a good time, and to actually have a full team out there this year would be awesome,” Travison said.
The team can be found on Instagram at @rhody.rifle.
