WVU rifle team, McCabe win NCAA titles
It was National Championship Saturday in Morgantown.
Maybe you better make that International Championship.
As hard as it is to win an NCAA Championship in any sport — ask the West Virginia football and basketball programs — the Mountaineers took home two of them and they were championships that could be celebrated around the world.
In started in Lexington, Kentucky, when WVU’s rifle team brought home the school’s 20th national crown by the slimmest margin of one point over the host Kentucky team, when c of Coopersville, Michigan, hit the final shot of the match to give WVU a final score of 4,738, edging Kentucky and its 4,737.
The Mountaineers had entered the final day of completion in third place behind Alaska-Fairbanks by 10 points, while also trailing Kentucky.
Facing as much pressure as you can in the sport, the WVU senior nailed a 10.1 to give coach Jon Hammond, a native of Aberdeen, Scotland, his seventh national crown since taking over as head coach in 2006.
“To do that on the last competition shot of my life, that was just so special,” Perrin said.
But that just got the day started with a bang, so to speak, as there was more gold in them thar hills for the Mountaineers and it was graduate student Ceili McCabe who mined it with a stirring move for the lead with three laps to go and then holding off a late challenge to win the NCAA 3,000-meter title.
McCabe, who is from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, was coming off winning championships in two events at the Big 12 championship meet.
McCabe was part of the school’s distance medley relay team on March 1 with classmate Sarah Tait, sophomore Kishay Roy and freshman Carlene Temple as it shattered the meet record with the time of 11:09.42.
She then clocked off a winning effort in the 3,000-meter run, finishing in a time of 9:07.6 for her fourth and fifth Big 12 indoor titles.
But this was the crowning achievement, winning in a time of 9:01.14, bettering her Big 12 mark by more than six seconds as she outlasted Doris Lemngole of Alabama, who finished in second with a time of 9:01.64.
The time broke the facility record at the Virginia Beach Sports Center.
The victory gives McCabe her 10th All-American designation in a collegiate career that is nearly unrivaled, winning in cross country, indoor and outdoor track.
“We have had a lot of special athletes come through this program,” said WVU coach Sean Cleary. “Each and every one of them has played a role in what we were able to experience today. For those who have never met Ceili, that is unfortunate as she is someone who everybody should want to represent this program, university and state. To watch her join some of the past greats of this program is a moment that I will never forget.”
Among those were WVU track and field national champions Pat Itany, Kate Vermeulen and Megan Metcalfe.
Vermeulen is the only other WVU athlete to win an indoor national championship.