Yahoo Movies NC State’s longtime rifle team, which produced a two-time Olympian, is no more
The rifle team at N.C. State University qualified as one of the oldest in the country, dating to 1958, and in its 65-year history it remained the only coed varsity sport on campus.
The team produced a two-time Olympian in Lucas Kozeniesky, who competed in the Rio De Janeiro games while a student in 2016 and won a silver medal in Tokyo four years later.
But this week, N.C. State announced it would cancel the program altogether, citing both inadequate facilities and a lack of competition nationwide. The eight members on the roster will keep their scholarships though their team is discontinued.
‘So disappointed’
Though it was not highly ranked, and boasting neither the budget nor the fan base of better-known Wolfpack sports, the move deflated generations of alumni who avidly boosted riflery.
“So disappointed that my university elected to scuttle the rifle program, one of the oldest college rifle teams in the nation,” said Charlie Marshall, an NCSU alumnus and father of a rifle athlete, in an email to the N&O. “Sad the university is turning their back to the only collegiate sport where women and men compete head to head against each other.”
Riflery is the first program dropped at N.C. State since 1986, when then athletic director dropped women’s golf and men’s gymnastics, according to Tim Peeler, Wolfpack sports historian.
This is the first varsity sport dropped by @packathletics since 1986, when newly named athletics director Jim Valvano discontinued women's golf and men's gymnastics. A year earlier, then-AD Willis Casey dropped M&W fencing and women's slow-pitch softball. https://t.co/v1VZ9bAhuY
— Tim Peeler (@PackTimPeeler) March 21, 2023
But despite alumni pride, the rifle program came to inhabit a vanishing landscape.
None of the eight players on this year’s varsity roster come from North Carolina, and no other college in the state has a team.
The Wolfpack shooters compete against fewer than a dozen teams nationwide, with Kentucky and West Virginia among the nearest states. The team from Fairbanks, Alaska, tended to dominate competition in recent years.
The rifle team costs comparatively little, with total expenses just over $450,000, according to figures filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity in Athletics Data Analysis.
But revenues fall short of half that total, leaving a gap of roughly $250,000. Players on the current roster said NC State’s move, while sad, came as little surprise.
Players, speaking to the N&O privately, described heavy turnover among the coaches in recent years, and facilities that paled next to those of rival schools.
‘Facilities are terrible’
The team trained in the basement of Broughton Hall, small and adequate for air rifles but little else. For much of their practice, they had to travel 30 minutes to a range off campus — travel for which they said they were only partially compensated.
“Disappointing honestly,” Kozeniesky said in an online note to the N&O. “NCSU is equipped to give the athletes everything they need to succeed but they have never invested into that program. Facilities are terrible. They promised me a range back in 2013 but never came through.”
“Being able to provide a top-level Division I experience for our student-athletes is our first priority and it is no longer feasible to do this for our rifle program,” Director of Athletics Boo Corrigan said in a news release.
But alumni and fans dating back decades lament the loss of a distinctive North Carolina team, whether or not it had become an anachronism.
