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Navy Rifle Team Qualifies For 17th Straight NCAA Championship

Mids surge in the last month of the season to post fourth-best qualifying score.

	Senior Josh Albright was last year's NCAA champion in the smallbore discipline.

Feb. 27, 2008

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- The Navy rifle team pieced together a strong second half of the season, catapulting the Mids into their 17th straight NCAA Championship to be held March 14-15, at West Point. Navy has advanced to every NCAA Championship since 1992.

Alaska, Kentucky, Nebraska, Nevada, TCU, Navy, Army and West Virginia will comprise the field. Navy enters the championship boasting the fourth-best average in the country.

"I am proud of this team and the way they responded in the last month of the season," said Navy head coach Bill Kelley. "We made it a goal at the start of the year to not be the team to end the streak, and the team turned it on when they needed to.

"We are going to go in there with the intentions of winning the NCAA title," said Kelley. "We feel we have the pieces to do that and are looking forward to the next few weeks to prepare for that."

Individual and team competitions in smallbore three-position (60 shots) will be held Friday, March 14. Individual and team competitions in air rifle (60 shots) will be held Saturday, March 15. The overall team champion will be determined by combining the smallbore and air rifle team totals into one aggregate score for each institution.

Navy is led in smallbore by senior Josh Albright, last year's NCAA smallbore champion. He is averaging a 577.4 in 10 matches in the discipline, and has posted six of the top nine scores by a Navy shooter this year.

Kelley has also received solid contributions from freshmen Alison Lankes and Chris Burleson and senior Monica Amagna. Lankes is second on the team with a 570.6 average in seven matches, while Burleson averages 568.6 in 10 matches. Amagna is third on the team with a 568.7 average in seven matches.

In air rifle, the Mids are led by Lisa Kunzelman. The junior from Constantia, N.Y., is averaging a school record 589.5 in 10 matches, and has seven of the top eight performances by a Navy shooter in the air rifle discipline this year. Albright, Amagna and Lankes joined Kunzelman at the NCAA Qualifier two weeks ago. Albright averages 580.8, Amagna contributes a 578.8 and Lankes comes in with a 579.0 average.

The Mids will compete against Akron in the MAC Championships on Saturday, March 1, in Cambridge, Mass. The Mids will be without the services of Kunzelman, as she will be competing in the US Olympic Trials in Colorado Springs, Colo.

# GO NAVY #