Mary Tucker of West Virginia University won the 2024 NCAA individual smallbore rifle title with an incredible comeback in the final at the match, held at the WVU Coliseum in Morgantown, West Virginia, on Friday, March 8.
She won the individual smallbore rifle championship with a score of 462.0 after clawing her way back up from as far back as eighth place in the final, trailing Texas Christian University's Stephanie Grundsøe, who led the field for most of prone and kneeling. At one point during the final, Tucker was in last place. She rocketed her way to a first place tie with Grundsøe in standing, both with scores of 410.4 after 40 shots.
The eight shooters in the 2024 NCAA smallbore rifle individual final were Tucker and Grundsøe, Katie Zaun of Texas Christian University, Sofia Ceccarello and Braden Peiser of Kentucky, Lea Horvath of Ole Miss, Sara Karasova of Alaska-Fairbanks and Cecilia Ossi of Nebraska.
A Tokyo 2020 Olympic silver medalist, Tucker was featured on the cover of the February 2024 issue of Shooting Sports USA after qualifying for the Paris 2024 team.
After six shooters had been eliminated from the final, it came down to TCU's Katie Zaun and Tucker, who fired a 10.6X for her last shot to clinch the title. Zaun finished as the smallbore runner-up with a final score of 459.8, and in third place was Grundsøe with 448.1
Prior to the final, Mary Tucker led the field in the individual competition with a qualification score of 596, three points ahead of the second place shooter, Sara Karasova of the University of Alaska-Fairbanks.
Mary Tucker's impressive performance on Friday certainly helped West Virginia University capture the NCAA smallbore team championship. WVU clinched the title with a team score of 2353-145X. In second place was TCU with 2347-147X, and third place went to Kentucky with 2338-123X.
The 2024 NCAA rifle championships will continue on Saturday, March 9, at the WVU Coliseum in Morgantown, West Virginia, with the air rifle championship and the awards ceremony. You can see the full scorecard at the NCAA website. Stay tuned for a full match report in a future issue of the digital magazine. Subscribe for free here.
