The Ole Miss Rifle team brought home the NCAA smallbore title from the NCAA Rifle Championships in Columbus, Ohio, on Friday, March 13 and Saturday, March 14. The team, composed entirely of women despite air rifle being a co-ed sport, finished third overall and tied for the best finish in program history. Audrey Gogniat won the individual air rifle championship.
The Rebels shot a 4738 overall to get on the podium, while their 2356 smallbore score secured the program’s first title in the event. Gogniat shot her fourth perfect score (600), tying former Rebel Lea Horvath for most in program history.
Rising-star sophomore Gracie Dinh finished No. 10 overall with a 1187. She shot 593 in smallbore and 594 in air rifle.
Championships in Columbus, Ohio on March 14. Photo courtesy Ole Miss Athletics
The West Virginia rifle team, the 2026 national champions, is composed of four women and six men, while the runner-up, Texas Christian University, is a women-only team. Still, Dinh said, all-women teams are by no means at a disadvantage.
“It’s actually really interesting because women tend to shoot better than men, at least (at) the collegiate level,” Dinh said. “If you look at the final, it was mostly women. For conference, it was almost all women.”
Head coach Will Shaner emphasized that because the sport has been co-ed for so long, the team does not give the gender of their competitors even a second thought.
“It’s been co-ed for as long as I can remember, so I think us as a team, we’re used to it. Rifle is really the one sport where males and females can compete on equal ground,” Shaner said. “It’s a great opportunity for them, but from a competitive standpoint, I don’t think it has really affected us.”
Some players, like Dinh, chose Ole Miss because it is a women’s only team.
“I really liked the team environment at Ole Miss,” Dinh said. “We all just love each other a lot and really support each other, both on and off the range. It played a huge part in that, and I think it’s because we’re an all-women’s team.”
While the Rebels had a great deal of success in the championship, winning in a mentally-tough sport is never easy.
“It was a really stressful experience, but we had fun,” Dinh said. “We worked really hard, and I think it was just a combination of something we had been preparing for all season. Coach (Will Shaner) told us, ‘It’s not a question of whether or not we’ll make the NCAA Championship,’ so he was preparing us for that mindset and that pressure throughout the season.”
Even though the team fell short of the goal of placing first, Shaner is proud of his athletes, especially how they managed the pressure of the high-stakes tournament.
“There’s a lot of high and low points, especially in rifle. (It) changes so fast during the match,” Shaner said. “I think smallbore, though we won, it was still lower scores than what we were expecting, so it was both a good surprise that we were in first, but we’ll just point to the girls, they didn’t do as well as they wanted. … This is the first time being in a position where they have a chance to win the overall title, so they held that pressure.”
