Brianna Shaw
  • Early Childhood/Special Education
  • Class of 2019
  • Agra, Kansas

UNG wins rifle championship in first year of Southern Conference play

2017 Mar 10

Brianna Shaw of Agra, Kansas, was among UNG Rifle Team members earning individual honors as the University of North Georgia (UNG) claimed the 2017 Southern Conference (SoCon) Rifle Championship on March 5 in Charleston, South Carolina, the first time a conference champion has been crowned since 1985.

"The Nighthawk Nation is extremely proud of the season-long accomplishments of our nationally acclaimed rifle program," UNG Athletic Director Lindsay Reeves said. "The SoCon championship and individual accolades punctuate a great year that included a top-20 national ranking and winning both the Senior Military College Championship and Georgia State Championship."

UNG turned in an aggregate team score of 4,564 - 51 points higher than second-place finisher Virginia Military Institute - on Sunday after competitions in air rifle and smallbore at the Citadel's Inouye Marksmanship Center.

Ruthanne Conner, a junior from Colville, Washington, earned both Air Rifle Athlete of the Year and Smallbore Athlete of the Year honors for the conference; the award is determined by averaging league shooters' top three regular-season finishes from different locations with their championship scores. Conner also received the Pinnacle Award, given to the student-athlete with the highest GPA on the championship team.

Andrew Abernathy, a senior from Marietta, Georgia, who placed second in the individual air rifle competition, was named to the All Conference Teams in both air rifle and smallbore - one of only two student-athletes at the meet to achieve that distinction.

Additional indivudal honors included: Lucas Gilliland, All-Southern Conference Air Rifle second team; Tobin Sanctuary, All-Southern Conference Smallbore first team; and Brianna Shaw, All-Southern Conference Smallbore second team.

UNG placed second in the air rifle competition, falling to Georgia Southern by two points, but won smallbore on March 4 after taking first- through third-places in the individual competition. Conner took the top spot, with Tobin Sanctuary, a freshman from Alstead, New Hampshire, in second and Abernathy in third. Brianna Shaw, a sophomore from Agra, Kansas, also took seventh place for UNG.

Head Coach Tori Kostecki, in her fifth year at the helm of UNG's rifle program, competed for UNG from 2007-11 and won individual air rifle and team national titles as a senior, when UNG was a club team. She became the program's first full-time coach when it achieved permanent NCAA standing in 2011. The Nighthawks won five Southeastern Air Rifle Conference titles as a club team, doing so each year from 1996-1999 and again in 2001.

Eight teams vied for the first team championship awarded since the co-educational sport was reinstated in the Southern Conference for this academic year: University of Alabama-Birmingham, the Citadel (co-ed and women's teams), Georgia Southern University, UNG, Virginia Military Institute (co-ed and women's teams) and Wofford College. The Southern Conference previously sponsored rifle from 1956-85.