2026 NRA National Smallbore Prone Championship Team Day Results

MARENGO, Ohio — Team day at a national championship usually spreads a field out. On Sunday it did the opposite.

The 2026 NRA National Smallbore Conventional Prone and F-Class Championships turned to team competition July 26 at the Cardinal Shooting Center, running the two international postal matches—the Dewar and the Randle—alongside the championship four-person prone and two-person F-Class team matches. When the bulletins posted, one club held every conventional prone place on the board and the entire F-Class field sat inside two points.

Joe Graf took on the project of repairing the Harold “Hap” Rocketto Trophy this past year. On his way to the Cardinal Shooting Center he stopped to show the restored trophy to the Rocketto family. The trophy was won Sunday by the Black Hawk Chiefs with a 3193-252X.

Bob Head fired the high Dewar score with a 399 and took the Edward C. Crossman Memorial Trophy. Michelle Bohren cleaned her Randle target with a 400-28X for the high score on the U.S. squad and the Eleanor Dunn Trophy.

Sling

Three teams entered the conventional prone team match. All three came from the Black Hawk Rifle Club, and they finished in that order.

Black Hawk Chiefs—Mike Carter, Ron Wigger, Wesley Shumaker and Michelle Bohren—won the Harold “Hap” Rocketto Trophy with a score of 3193-252X. The Chiefs did not simply take the aggregate; they won both legs of it, posting 1595-121X in Sunday’s metallic team match and 1598-131X in the any sight match. That any sight score dropped two points across 160 record shots.

Black Hawk Warriors took second at 3186-221X with Stephen Angeli, Cameron Zwart, Bob Head and Jamie Piotrowski. Seasoned Black Hawks finished a single point behind them at 3185-194X, fielding Denise Loring, James Miller, Mike O’Connor and Joe Graf.

The Warriors and the Seasoned Black Hawks had tied outright in the metallic leg, both firing 1590, with the Warriors taking the placing on center shots, 101 to 88. It took the any sight match to separate them on score at all—and even then, by one point.

Nine perfect 400s came off the line in the two team matches. Head and O’Connor each cleaned the metallic Dewar course, and Wigger, Shumaker, Loring, Zwart, Head, Piotrowski and O’Connor all posted 400s in any sights.

F-Class

The F-Class team matches, fired concurrently with the prone teams, produced the tightest finish of the championship so far.

Black Hawk F-Class—brothers Daniel and Sam Pagliari—topped the leaderboard with 1594-120X. H&H Precision, Thomas Hittle and James Hittle, Jr., took second at 1593-124X. Berger’s Danny Biggs and Jim Murphy were third at 1592-124X.

Read that again: the second- and third-place teams finished on identical X-counts, separated by a single point. And the winning team had the lowest X-count of the three—Black Hawk took the title on score alone, four center shots behind both teams it beat.

The two legs split. Black Hawk F-Class won the metallic Dewar team match at 798-58X, with H&H a point back at 797-64X and Berger at 795-61X. Berger answered in the any sight match with a 797-63X, the best single team score of the day, while Black Hawk and H&H both fired 796—split, once again, on X-count.

Dewar and Randle

The U.S. Dewar Team fired Sunday under coaches Edie Fleeman and Emily Caruso, with 20 firing members drawn from the top of the metallic sight aggregate. Anyone hoping to be considered for the squad had to shoot the metallic matches with British-legal equipment—a 40 mm sling, and optics in the front or rear sight, but not both. Scores go to the National Small-bore Rifle Association of Great Britain, which administers the match.

The 2026 U.S. Dewar Team at the Cardinal Shooting Center. Top row from left: Ron Wigger, Cameron Zwart, Jim Miller and Jamie Piotrowski. Middle row from left: Coach Edie Fleeman, Steve Angeli, Dan Wigger, Bob Yakushi, Bob Head, Denise Loring, Mike Carter, Wesley Shumaker, Mike O’Connor, Bret Higgins and Michelle Bohren. Bottom row from left: Coach Emily Caruso, Nicholas Frieler, Chris Rakyta, Joe Graf, Avery Hines, Bridget Kinna, Zoe Traul and Annie He.

The Randle team, coached by Deb Lyman and captained by Michele Medige, fielded 10 firing women plus two alternates, selected from the top American women in the metallic sight aggregate. The U.S. squad is the only one that fires at Cardinal; the rest of the invited English-speaking nations shoot on their home ranges and mail their targets.

Conventional Prone Team Match — Match 650

F-Class Team Match — Match 850

On deck tonight at the Cardinal Shooting Center is the NRA Conventional Prone and F-Class Championship awards ceremony, closing out this year’s NRA Smallbore Nationals. Stay tuned for the final results and more NRA National Championship coverage.