Air Pistol team members train on a range set up in the Liberty Club Sports Complex.
Air Pistol team offers shooters potential to compete against, pray with nation’s best
11/20/2024 5:33:00 PM | Pistol
Liberty will look to travel to programs such as Ohio State and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and qualify to compete in the SSSF National Championships in Alabama in mid-March.
It's a new era for Liberty University's Club Sports shooting sports teams, with the Action and Rifle teams from previous seasons combining to form an Air Pistol squad, complementing the shotgun team that still practices at the Liberty Mountain Gun Club.
"It is essentially an amalgamation of two different teams to be combined to be the first time ever that Liberty has had an Air Pistol team," said Bill Crawford, who serves as Senior Director of Campus Recreation and as head coach, working with second-year Assistant Coach Andrew Medford. "Air Pistol is actually an Olympic discipline, an international discipline, a collegiate discipline where you shoot air-powered pellets at 10 meters and it's a very, very precision-oriented game. Unlike some of the other shooting sports, it's all one-handed. It's very much a balance game, a precision game, and a concentration game."
Flames senior Michael McKnight, who spent the past three seasons on the Action team, said the transition to Air Pistol has gone smoothly.
"They are very different sports in general," McKnight said. "For the Action team, we used to shoot long-range rifles very quickly versus in this, we are shooting pistols rather slowly at close range, so it's more focused on the actual precision of the shooting with the pistol rather than movements and shooting. It's been pretty interesting, and we've definitely learned a lot through both of those."
Crawford and Medford are excited for the opportunity to compete against larger, more well-known universities in a nationally recognized sport.
"One of the unique things is since there is not an NCAA Air Pistol (division), when we do go to compete, we will be competing against the U.S. Military Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, Ohio State, Purdue," Crawford said. "So when we go to shoot, we'll be shooting against the best in the country, some of whom are Olympians. At last year's (nationals), there were three Olympians there, so that will be our new competition."
Scholastic Shooting Sports Foundation (SSSF) is the sanctioning body for the Collegiate Pistol Championships, occurring the second week of March at the Civilian Marksmanship Program facility in Anniston, Ala., with the the Flames and Lady Flames still deciding if they will compete in that competition.
Crawford said one of the highlights of his coaching career at Liberty was at the Scholastic Action Shooting Program (SASP) Collegiate National Championships in Talladega, Ala., where the team swept titles in three disciplines and also made its faith well known on a national stage.
"The first day, at the beginning of the competition, our team got together and prayed," he said. "We didn't make a big show of it … (but) the second day of the competition, one of the other teams approached us and said, 'Hey, we saw you praying yesterday, may we pray with you?' To me that was kind of the pinnacle of the whole competition. The third day … there were about six teams that came up and we all prayed. So that opportunity to reach out and touch some people, maybe who are Christians and are not necessarily able to show it because they were in secular schools. It also gives us the opportunity to show that you can be competitive and also be a strong Christian. That was a really cool witness for us."
"That's a big thing, too, being in this division now we can go to other colleges and represent Liberty and represent Christ," McKnight added. "We don't know what their background is, so it will be really good to go out there and meet new people and spread the message to these colleges."
"What's cooler than to shoot for God?" sophomore Lauren Frackleton added. "You're part of a school that lives and breathes Training Champions For Christ, and being a part of a sports team that you get to do that is super cool because it's all for Him, all for His glory."
Video edited by Cody Ware/Club Sports Video & Media Student Intern
"It is essentially an amalgamation of two different teams to be combined to be the first time ever that Liberty has had an Air Pistol team," said Bill Crawford, who serves as Senior Director of Campus Recreation and as head coach, working with second-year Assistant Coach Andrew Medford. "Air Pistol is actually an Olympic discipline, an international discipline, a collegiate discipline where you shoot air-powered pellets at 10 meters and it's a very, very precision-oriented game. Unlike some of the other shooting sports, it's all one-handed. It's very much a balance game, a precision game, and a concentration game."
Flames senior Michael McKnight, who spent the past three seasons on the Action team, said the transition to Air Pistol has gone smoothly.
"They are very different sports in general," McKnight said. "For the Action team, we used to shoot long-range rifles very quickly versus in this, we are shooting pistols rather slowly at close range, so it's more focused on the actual precision of the shooting with the pistol rather than movements and shooting. It's been pretty interesting, and we've definitely learned a lot through both of those."
Crawford and Medford are excited for the opportunity to compete against larger, more well-known universities in a nationally recognized sport.
"One of the unique things is since there is not an NCAA Air Pistol (division), when we do go to compete, we will be competing against the U.S. Military Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, Ohio State, Purdue," Crawford said. "So when we go to shoot, we'll be shooting against the best in the country, some of whom are Olympians. At last year's (nationals), there were three Olympians there, so that will be our new competition."
Scholastic Shooting Sports Foundation (SSSF) is the sanctioning body for the Collegiate Pistol Championships, occurring the second week of March at the Civilian Marksmanship Program facility in Anniston, Ala., with the the Flames and Lady Flames still deciding if they will compete in that competition.
Crawford said one of the highlights of his coaching career at Liberty was at the Scholastic Action Shooting Program (SASP) Collegiate National Championships in Talladega, Ala., where the team swept titles in three disciplines and also made its faith well known on a national stage.
"The first day, at the beginning of the competition, our team got together and prayed," he said. "We didn't make a big show of it … (but) the second day of the competition, one of the other teams approached us and said, 'Hey, we saw you praying yesterday, may we pray with you?' To me that was kind of the pinnacle of the whole competition. The third day … there were about six teams that came up and we all prayed. So that opportunity to reach out and touch some people, maybe who are Christians and are not necessarily able to show it because they were in secular schools. It also gives us the opportunity to show that you can be competitive and also be a strong Christian. That was a really cool witness for us."
"That's a big thing, too, being in this division now we can go to other colleges and represent Liberty and represent Christ," McKnight added. "We don't know what their background is, so it will be really good to go out there and meet new people and spread the message to these colleges."
"What's cooler than to shoot for God?" sophomore Lauren Frackleton added. "You're part of a school that lives and breathes Training Champions For Christ, and being a part of a sports team that you get to do that is super cool because it's all for Him, all for His glory."
Video edited by Cody Ware/Club Sports Video & Media Student Intern
Players Mentioned
/ Pistol
Liberty Club Sports Holistic Development 2024-25
Thursday, May 22
Liberty Air Pistol 2024-2025 Season Preview
Wednesday, November 13
Liberty Action Season Preview 2022-23
Wednesday, July 26