The NCAA News - News and Features

December 1, 1997

Aiming high

Grants from the United States Olympic Committee should give rifle a boost in two top conferences

BY MARTY BENSON
STAFF WRITER

Although some administrative details need to be ironed out before the money is in hand, the sport of rifle should enjoy an upswing after the Ohio Valley Conference and Midwest America Rifle Conference receive grants they were allotted in July by the United States Olympic Committee.

The $300,000 in grants is part of an $8 million, four-year USOC program to assist NCAA member conferences/associations with funding Olympic sports that are considered endangered or emerging at the collegiate level.

The USOC will distribute the money in annual increments, with the actual amount depending on the respective conferences' initiatives in a given year.

Both conferences are rifle strongholds, but the similarities stop there.

The OVC, which is celebrating its 50th year as a multi-sport conference, has five institutions (out of 10) that sponsor rifle -- Austin Peay State University (women only), Morehead State University, Murray State University, Tennessee Technological University and the University of Tennessee at Martin.

By contrast, the MARC is a gathering of convenience -- four independent schools that came together this season because they saw a chance to seize the opportunity the USOC was presenting.

The schools include 12-time national champion West Virginia University, the University of Kentucky, Xavier University and Jacksonville State University.

"We got together to help the sport," West Virginia coach Marsha Beasley said.

"(Having a conference championship) gives our athletes who don't qualify for the NCAA championships a meaningful competition at the end of the year, which has become more important as the number of qualifiers has been reduced."

Rifle's power base

Despite their lack of similarity, the two conferences represent the power base of the sport. Members have accounted for all but one of the 18 NCAA team titles and 29 of the 36 individual titles (two per year) that have been contested since the Association's championships began in 1980. Last year, three of the top four teams at the championships were from one of the two conferences. All told, the sport's national governing body, U.S. Shooting, could not have hand-picked a gathering more likely to produce the national team candidates it seeks to develop.

Faced with nearly identical bids from two worthy suitors, the USOC decided to split its rifle pool with some conditions attached. Those conditions have not been met yet, so the money has not been distributed.

"The interest of our committee was for it to be a joint grant, but the two conferences were not keen on that idea," said Curt L. Hamakawa, USOC director of athlete support. "They came back and said they wanted to split the grant and go their own way; we came back and said we'd still like to see some joint activity.

"We would like to see a critical mass emerge from which we could get maximum impact. Having a joint conference championship would be beneficial. The more competition there is, the better for us."

Robert Mitchell, director of operations for U.S. Shooting, which will serve as the coordinating group for the distribution of the funds, said combining the grant was the most reasonable approach.

"The proposals were very similar," he said. "It would have been tough to make the grant to one conference and not the other."

OVC combined five proposals

Thurston E. Banks, faculty athletics representative at Tennessee Tech and the person who compiled the OVC paperwork for the USOC, said that, in essence, there were five proposals from the OVC -- one from each institution -- that the conference presented as one package. Once the money is received, it will be distributed to those schools, according to the varying amounts they had requested, by conference Commissioner R. Daniel Beebe.

Banks said that his institution plans to use the money, in part, to upgrade its shooting range.

"We also will look to increase travel and purchase new equipment, things that our budget would not permit us to do in the past," he said.

Elvis Green, coach at Murray State, said that although his school has an outstanding shooting facility, the money would be used to improve its lighting and to fund recruiting.

Green said that another conference initiative is financing scholarships for OVC institutions that once sponsored rifle, to encourage them to resurrect the sport.

"The initial cost is in getting the program started," he said. "Once you do that, most of the athletes own their own equipment, so it is a relatively inexpensive sport."

Establishing championship

Jerry N. Cole, director of athletics at Jacksonville State and chair of the MARC, said the conference will use the funds it receives in its first year to conduct a conference championship that would provide a high-level competition experience with Olympic-style finals. A secondary goal is to increase media and spectator interest, which, ideally, would result in increased support for the sport and increase participation at the grass-roots level.

Like the OVC, the MARC also seeks to enhance existing programs and encourage the beginning of others. Unlike the OVC, the MARC is not geographically limited in that respect, which could give it greater potential.

The distribution of funds in the conference will be overseen by a committee of representatives from each school sponsoring the sport.

Being a fledgling conference, the MARC has no objection to working with the OVC in whatever manner the USOC sees fit.

"If this is their intent in giving the money, we are agreeable to it," Cole said. "We would like to have an interconference championship."

Naturally, the OVC has more protocol to go through before it can decide to make such a decision, which means dissemination of the funds is not likely until sometime after this season.

Beebe, however, said the OVC is agreeable to working out some type of joint relationship.

"Until this issue came up, we had no understanding what was out there as far as rifle goes," Beebe said. "Perhaps we have to look at a combination of conferences under one banner, which would provide an enhanced experience for our student-athletes."