MORGANTOWN — West Virginia rifle beat Kentucky, who is one of the top programs in the country, 4746-4741, in a comeback win on Feb. 14. The win handed the Mountaineers their third-straight Great America Rifle Conference regular season title, and the 17th overall. WVU finished the regular season losing one of its 19 matches. The lone loss came in November, and WVU is currently on a 12-game winning streak.

“I think that was a pretty good one,” sophomore Jacob Wisman said. “Kentucky’s probably our biggest competitor this year, so that was a really good one.”

The win over Kentucky seems pretty big in the moment. But when you really look at it, knowing the history of the program, this is just another day in the office for a rifle program led by head coach Jon Hammond and his staff. Under Hammond, who has led the program for 20 years, WVU rifle has won 16 GARC Championships and won the conference for 11 straight years in the early 2010s.

At the national level, Hammond led the Mountaineers to seven national championships, had 10 individual NCAA titles and coached multiple Olympians, including gold medalists Ginny Thrasher and Nicco Campriani.

Hammond put WVU rifle back on the map and made it one of the most dominant dynasties in collegiate sports.

On Feb. 21, Hammond leads his squad into his 20th postseason, starting with the NCAA qualifiers at 9 a.m. at the WVU Rifle Range. Then, WVU will compete for another GARC Championship at the end of the month, followed by the NCAA Championships on March 13 and 14.

Obviously, WVU is a top contender to sweep the postseason. That’s a lot of pressure for a bunch of college athletes, and most of the team is underclassmen.

“We’ve definitely had individuals in the past who felt that little bit of extra weight,” Hammond said. “There’s a lot of history and tradition here, and we’re competing for West Virginia. The expectation is that we are competing to win championships every year.”

Hammond’s ability to relieve some of the pressure off of them has helped WVU be so successful over the years. Hammond doesn’t set expectations for his team before the season. Obviously, there is the outside noise that it’s championship, or bust, but he can’t control that.

Hammond tells his athletes to just take it day by day. The expectations he sets are more personal to the athlete.

“A lot of the expectations are just more behavior,” Hammond said. “We want 100% effort. We want them to do things with a great attitude, a positive attitude. We want them to be great teammates and support each other. Most of our expectations are based around those things.”

Rifle is unique in the aspect that it is an individual sport. Yes, there’s a team aspect, but what the other team does doesn’t affect how you shoot. Hammond said you can have a really bad match, but the person across can have an even worse one, resulting in a win.

Hammond coaches differently from a head football coach or basketball coach because his coaching is more one-on-one, and he isn’t coaching 20-plus athletes like most sports.

“I think that’s the fun thing about it, for sure,” Hammond said. “We really coach 10 individuals, but within a team environment. We still want to practice as a team, do things together and support each other. But it’s very golf-like as well. When the golfers play like they’re playing their own ball, they’re playing their own rounds. It’s the same for our guys.”

Other than the mental preparation, the WVU rifle team needs to do some physical preparation. Practices won’t be too intense because most of the groundwork has been laid out over the span of the season. It’s just fine-tuning some things before heading into the postseason.

“We’re maybe trying to find different ways to challenge them, push them,” Hammond said. “Head-to-head competition, or just kind of team competition with each other, so that you’re just replicating a competition environment as much as you possibly can.”

It’s easy to become complacent when practicing. WVU hasn’t felt like what it means to lose since November.

The journey hasn’t been easy, but after glancing at the record, it looked easy. A lot of WVU’s last couple of matches have been against ranked teams, and WVU has beaten five of those ranked teams by an average of almost 50 points.

But, knowing that another national championship could come to Morgantown at the end of the season, it’s hard not to be motivated. The 2026 team is just as motivated as the great teams in the past, which should set up for another strong postseason for Hammond’s team.

“I think our challenge is keeping them focused on themselves and how they can have their best performance in terms of motivation,” Hammond said. “Maybe sometimes day in, day out, but as we get to this point of the season, they all want to compete at the NCAA Championships. We can only take five of them to that match. But as a team, they want to win matches. They want to shoot the best scores that they can possibly shoot. They’re motivated to do that.”