Océanne Muller Goes Perfect as WVU Opens Bid for Third Straight Title

Océanne Muller did not drop a point in air rifle Saturday, and she needed every one of them.

The West Virginia sophomore fired a perfect 600-57X in the Mountaineers’ season opener at the WVU Shell Building in Morgantown, West Virginia, which lifted her into a three-way tie at 1186 with senior Griffin Lake and junior Jennifer Kocher. Centers decided it. Muller’s 94 beat Lake by one and Kocher by five, and the two-time defending NCAA champions opened their bid for a third straight title with a 4737-4587 win over Mount Aloysius.

Each of Muller’s six 10-shot air rifle strings read 100. She is now the 12th Mountaineer to post a perfect 600 in the discipline, a list Lake joined last season. She added a 586-37X in smallbore, where Lake led the field at 590-43X on the strength of three consecutive 100s across his second kneeling string and both prone strings.

Kocher’s air rifle card was nearly as clean. She strung together four straight 100s on her way to 598-50X and added 588-39X in smallbore. Six months ago in Columbus, Ohio, all three fired 599 in the air rifle round that carried WVU from fourth place to its 21st NCAA championship, and nothing about Saturday suggested the summer cooled any of them off.

WVU shot 2351-149X in smallbore and 2386-204X in air rifle for a 4737-353X aggregate. Coach Jon Hammond’s five-person scoring team was Lake, Muller, Kocher, sophomore Jack Ogoreuc and junior Jacob Wisman, with the top four scores in each discipline counting. Ogoreuc placed fourth at 1179-77X (587-30X smallbore, 592-47X air rifle), one point ahead of Wisman, who finished with a score of 1178-71X.

The scores that didn’t count said plenty about this roster, too. Senior Lauri Syrja’s 588-35X matched Kocher for the second-best smallbore score of the day, and junior Ashlyn Blake’s 595-46X was fourth-best in air rifle, but neither was on the scoring team. WVU finished with nine of the top 10 aggregates.

Freshman Karlie Lynn made her collegiate debut count, placing seventh at 1177-74X with a 584-29X in smallbore and a 593-45X in air rifle. She represented the United States at the ISSF Junior World Championships this summer, as did sophomore Hana Strakusek for Slovenia. Strakusek finished 10th at 1165-59X.

Lynn, from Hopewell, Pennsylvania, is one of three Pennsylvanians among WVU’s top finishers, alongside Lake (Emmaus) and Ogoreuc (Grove City). That carries some resonance against this opponent. Mount Aloysius, a Division III school in Cresson, Pennsylvania, became the only school in the state to field an NCAA rifle team in 2024 so the commonwealth’s high school shooters would have a college option without crossing state lines.

Now in its third season under coach Siarra Crum, Mount Aloysius left Morgantown with something to show for the trip. Its 4587 aggregate (2270 smallbore, 2317 air rifle) was 51 points better than its best in four previous meetings with WVU, a 4536 at last November’s WVU Fall Classic. Kayla Trinkle, the 2025 Mid-Atlantic Rifle Conference Athlete of the Year, was the only non-Mountaineer in the top 10, placing ninth at 1168-65X behind a 583-26X smallbore card that included 100s in kneeling and prone. Molly Miller matched Trinkle’s 585 in air rifle.

West Virginia opens Great America Rifle Conference play Oct. 3 at Army’s Tronsrue Marksmanship Center in West Point, New York, then faces Norwich and John Jay on Oct. 4. Its first meeting with a 2026 NCAA Championship team comes Oct. 17-18 at Georgia Southern, coached by former WVU assistant Soren Butler. Statesboro is also where the season ends, with the 2027 NCAA Championship set for March 12-13.

Full results are posted at ncaarifle.org.