NC State is discontinuing its rifle program

NC State announced Tuesday that it is discontinuing its rifle program at the end of the 2022-23 academic year, shuttering a sport is has sponsored since 1958. That decision probably has little to do with performance, since the program has been pretty good over the years and had an athlete compete in the Olympics not that long ago.

In the final accounting, the, uh, accounting likely did the dictating. Rifle isn’t an ACC-sponsored sport, and there are fewer than two dozen NCAA rifle programs in existence. Additionally, because it’s a coed sport, cutting these scholarships likely has no impact on the school’s Title IX compliance. These were all probably contributing factors behind the decision.

In the school’s release, Boo Corrigan said “it is no longer feasible” to “provide a top-level Division-I experience” for the program, which is just another way of saying “we’d rather invest these resources elsewhere.”

That sucks for everyone involved with the program, obviously, though at least the school will be honoring all scholarships for their duration. Doing otherwise would have been cruel, especially since every single member of the team is from out of state.