Kentucky’s Braden Peiser put all 60 of his air rifle shots in the 10-ring Saturday, and the No. 2-ranked Wildcats rode that perfect 600 to a 4724-4702 win over No. 9 Murray State in their first home match of the season at Barker Hall in Lexington, Kentucky.
Peiser, a senior, strung together six consecutive 100s with his Walther LG500 itec for a 600-53X. It’s the third perfect score of his college career and his first since the 2025 Great America Rifle Conference Championships at WVU in Morgantown, West Virginia. His first came earlier that season at Alaska-Fairbanks, a 600-59X that still shares the NCAA record for center shots on a perfect card with former teammate Sofia Ceccarello (now a graduate assistant coach for the Wildcats) and Jacksonville State’s Frans Rasmusson.
Smallbore came first, and Peiser set the tone there with a 592-37X built on a 199 in prone. Murray State’s Mallory Johnson matched him point for point and X for X, but her standing air rifle performance settled the overall race. Peiser’s 1192-90X aggregate finished nine points clear of Johnson’s 1183.
“Proud of Braden, that took a lot of determination and focus to do today,” Kentucky Head Coach Harry Mullins said in an article published at ukathletics.com.
Two other Wildcats posted personal highs behind him. Freshman Maggie Palfrey and sophomore Jacob St. Hilaire each fired a career-best 597-49X in air rifle, and Palfrey’s 1180 aggregate was good for third overall. Kentucky shot 2383 as a team in air rifle after taking smallbore by five points, 2341-2336. See the full match scorecard at ncaarifle.org.
Air Rifle Perfection
Peiser’s score is the sixth 600 of a season barely two weeks old, and every weekend of competition so far has produced at least one.
West Virginia sophomore Océanne Muller started the run Sept. 26 with a 600-57X against Mount Aloysius College in Morgantown. She went clean again Oct. 3 at Army’s Tronsrue Marksmanship Center in West Point, New York, becoming the first Mountaineer to go perfect in consecutive matches. Junior teammate Jennifer Kocher added her first career 600 on the same range the next day.
That Sunday at Ohio State’s Converse Hall in Columbus, Ohio, Navy’s Isabella Baldwin and Tyler Wee turned in identical cards: 595 in smallbore and 600 in air rifle. Baldwin’s 58 Xs edged Wee’s 57 for the air rifle win, and it was the second time the pair has gone perfect in the same match. The first came at The Citadel last February.
Five shooters from three programs have now combined for six perfect scores in the season’s first 15 days. Last season produced 13 before the NCAA Championship, more than a quarter of every 600 fired in the NCAA’s 60-shot era.
The streak goes back on the line Saturday, when Kentucky hosts No. 15 Akron and West Virginia visits Georgia Southern.
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