2026 Tennessee State BB Gun Championship
Bend of the River
Cookeville, Tennessee
April 20
37 competitors
Submitted by Charlie Pardue
Lily Cope won the Tennessee State BB Gun Championship Match by half a point, and in a discipline where competitors shoot at a bullseye the size of an aspirin, that margin is about as comfortable as it gets.
Cope, from Monterey, posted a score of 474.9 out of a possible 536 to edge Ellison Phy of Baxter at 474.4 and Hannah Fortunato of Cookeville at 472.4. The match drew 37 competitors from across the state to Bend of the River on April 20.
The competition is open to shooters ages 8 to 15 using the Daisy 499B Champion Competition Air Rifle at a distance of 5 meters. Each competitor fires 10 shots in four positions—prone, standing, sitting and kneeling—with scoring broken down to tenths of a point for a maximum of 10.9 per shot. A written test rounds out the total possible score of 536.
Cope's steadiest work came in prone, where she posted a 100.6, one of only two scores more than 100 across the entire match. The other belonged to Gunny Helton, the Champions of Champions winner from Hilham, who shot a 101.2 in prone.
Individual position winners were spread across the field. Jaxson Thompson of Livingston led prone with a 99.8. Cole Skeleton of Nunnelly took standing with a 91.5. Eathan Ganzevoort of Maryville was first in sitting with a 99.7 and Thompson came back to lead kneeling with a 97.1. More than half the competitors scored above 90 in sitting.
In the team competition, the Awesome 'Possums from Bend of the River, with Cope, Phy, Fortunato, Thompson and Khloe Phann, won with a combined score of 2349.2. The Bullseye Bandits from Blount County 4-H were runner-up at 2159.1 and the Mountain G.O.A.T.S. from Monterey placed third at 2137.5. All three teams earned invitations to the Daisy BB Gun Nationals in Rogers, Arkansas, in July.
Phy took home the Daniel Shakleford Award with a shooting score of 380.7. The award honors Daniel Shakleford, a shooter from Manchester who died of cancer during the 1984 season and goes to the competitor with the highest shooting score.
In the Champions of Champions match—a separate event for shooters aging out of eligibility or returning from last year's Daisy BB Gun Nationals—Helton finished first with 488.4 over Josiah Fortunato, Pypper Wilson, Lily McCloud and Brodi Dogan. Two competitors scored a perfect 100 on the written test, and the tiebreaker was settled by leg wrestle. Fortunato won three of five rounds over Helton to take the test title.
