The first time Mount Aloysius College won the Mid-Atlantic Rifle Conference Championship, it was a story almost too good to believe—a startup program, barely a year old sweeping the team and individual titles in its inaugural season. The second time? That’s when it stops being a surprise and starts becoming a standard.
Mount Aloysius successfully defended its title at the 2026 MAC Championship, held February 28 through March 1 at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Mounties posted a two-gun aggregate of 4558, one point better than last year’s championship score of 4557, to finish atop a field of six collegiate rifle teams. They won both the smallbore (2245) and air rifle (2313) team titles, sweeping the board for the second consecutive year.
Host school MIT claimed second place with a 4454 aggregate, followed by Rhode Island in third with 4437.
The two-day format at MIT’s range opened with smallbore on Saturday, where Mount Aloysius College posted a 2245 to lead the team standings. The Mounties’ scoring was anchored by James Stevens (572), Kayla Trinkle (561), Molly Miller (558) and Samantha Hayman (554).
Rhode Island finished second in smallbore at 2199, followed by MIT with 2177.
Air rifle on Sunday saw Mount Aloysius pull further ahead. Miller’s 589 led the way, with Trinkle adding a 581, Sydney Castel at 574 and Stevens contributing 569. The Mounties’ 2313 team air rifle score was comfortably ahead of MIT’s 2277 and John Jay College’s 2266.
The team title was never really in doubt. But the individual race is where things got interesting: a tale of two Mollys.
The Two Mollys
Molly Mitchell arrived at Schreiner University this fall as a freshman and proceeded to do what freshmen aren’t supposed to do—she led the conference in smallbore from nearly the first match and never let go. At the MAC Championship, Mitchell fired a 577 in smallbore and followed it with a 586 in air rifle to win the individual aggregate title with a 1163, the highest score posted by any athlete at this year’s tournament. She earned the 2026 MAC Rookie of the Year award with a 1149.86 season average, and her 579 smallbore score fired at TCU on January 18 stood as the conference’s highest individual mark of the season, earning her the Smallbore Achievement Award.
Then there is sophomore Molly Miller of Mount Aloysius, who followed up her own Rookie of the Year campaign in 2025 with something even better in year two. Miller was named the 2026 MAC Athlete of the Year after averaging 1151.67 in the aggregate across the regular season. At the championship, she fired the top air rifle score in the field, a 589 out of 600, anchoring the Mounties’ dominant team performance. Her season-high 591 in air rifle, fired October 26 against Norwich at West Point, New York, remained the conference’s single highest individual air rifle score of the year and earned her the Air Rifle Achievement Award for the second consecutive season.
2026 MAC CHAMPIONSHIP LEADERBOARD
Team Standings
| Rank | Team | Smallbore | Air Rifle | Aggregate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mount Aloysius College | 2245 | 2313 | 4558 |
| 2 | MIT | 2177 | 2277 | 4454 |
| 3 | University of Rhode Island | 2199 | 2238 | 4437 |
| 4 | Norwich University | 2163 | 2243 | 4406 |
| 5 | Schreiner University | 2158 | 2245 | 4403 |
| 6 | John Jay College | 2017 | 2266 | 4283 |
Individual Standings
| Rank | Athlete | Team | Smallbore | Air Rifle | Aggregate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Molly Mitchell | Schreiner | 577 | 586 | 1163 |
| 2 | Molly Miller | Mount Aloysius | 558 | 589 | 1147 |
| 3* | Eleanor Yang | MIT | 559 | 583 | 1142 |
| 4* | Kayla Trinkle | Mount Aloysius | 561 | 581 | 1142 |
| 5 | James Stevens | Mount Aloysius | 572 | 569 | 1141 |
| 5 | Sophia Wood | Rhode Island | 565 | 576 | 1141 |
| 7 | Cora Anderson | Schreiner | 561 | 564 | 1125 |
| 8 | Annabelle Schneider | Coast Guard | 551 | 572 | 1123 |
| 9 | Samantha Hayman | Mount Aloysius | 554 | 568 | 1122 |
| 10 | William Knowlton | MIT | 543 | 573 | 1116 |
| 11 | Emily Lopez | Rhode Island | 557 | 558 | 1115 |
| 12 | Sydney Castel | Mount Aloysius | 538 | 574 | 1112 |
| 13 | Danny Canning | John Jay | 532 | 578 | 1110 |
| 14 | Alex Travison | Rhode Island | 547 | 559 | 1106 |
| 15 | Isabella Evans | Schreiner | 539 | 565 | 1104 |
| 16 | Sage Kontny | Norwich | 544 | 552 | 1096 |
| 17 | Danny Antonelli | MIT | 540 | 555 | 1095 |
| 18 | Amanda Irizarry | Coast Guard | 535 | 549 | 1084 |
| 19 | JB Zhao | John Jay | 527 | 552 | 1079 |
| 20 | Avaneesh Pal | MIT | 528 | 529 | 1057 |
*Third-place tie broken by X-count: Yang 51X, Trinkle 49X.
The margins were tight in the middle of the pack—just 51 points separated second through fifth—but Mount Aloysius College, with its 104-point cushion over MIT, left no doubt at the top.
Mitchell’s 1163 aggregate was ahead of Miller’s 1147 to earn the individual title. The battle for third was decided by X-count: Yang and Trinkle both fired 1142, but Yang’s 51 Xs edged Trinkle’s 49 for the bronze.
A Program Still Writing Its Origin Story
It’s worth remembering how new all of this is for Mount Aloysius. The rifle program traces its origins to a 2017 conversation between Head Coach Siarra Crum and Athletic Director Kevin Kime, when Crum was interviewing for an internship. By January 2024, the school had announced the formation of the only NCAA rifle team in Pennsylvania, with Crum at the helm.
She recruited Miller, Trinkle and Hayman to join existing Mount Aloysius students Elissa Barron and Sydney Castel. That five-person squad won the MAC Championship in its first season last year. This year, with the addition of freshman James Stevens—who fired the second-highest individual smallbore score at the championship—the Mounties proved the debut wasn’t a fluke.
Four Mount Aloysius rifle team shooters held top-10 conference rankings entering the championship. The program’s team averages of 2239.17 in smallbore and 2305.17 in air rifle were the best in the MAC all season.
Learn more about the Mid-Atlantic Rifle Conference at midatlanticrifle.org.
