Butler rifle, Jackson Jungling win 1st state team and individual championships
Butler’s rifle team made history last week — twice.
The co-ed team won its first Pennsylvania Interscholastic Prone Championship title, and sophomore Jackson Jungling won the team’s first individual championship.
“Everybody is absolutely thrilled and obviously proud of their performance,” coach Eric Beveridge said over the phone Saturday. “Hopefully, we can go back to back with that, which would be awesome.”
The Golden Tornado scored a 1,019.9 in Tuesday’s team championships and had to wait two days for all the results to be posted from across the state, Jungling said. They beat runner-up Hempfield Area’s 1,015.1 and third-place Everett (1,010.6) in what was a comfortable margin of victory, Beveridge said.
Jungling’s gold-winning individual score was 413.8, beating Penn-Trafford’s Emily Valenta by a half-point margin. Stroudsburg’s Gavin Dunkelberger finished third (410.9), and Butler’s Alyssa Miller also made the podium in fifth with a 409.7.
“I’m honored to make history for my team and for my school,” Jungling said on the phone.
“I thought it was incredible,” Beveridge said. “We kind of expected him to perform pretty well. With the season he had … we knew he’d put up a really good score, but some of the competitors he had to go up against across the state are pretty good.”
Beveridge said the team was motivated after a third-place finish at the WPIAL Rifle Championships. He expected this team early in the year to be competitive; Butler finished the season undefeated in the regular season. He shuffled some of the lineup, though, after WPIALs and had some of his alternates put up big scores Tuesday.
A freshman, Andrew Wolf, led Butler in the team portion along with Miller with a 204.5.
“(Wolf) really stepped up to help the team at the championship,” Beveridge said. “I was just impressed by how all of them worked together to get their scores up and win the championship.”
Jungling, who won the WPIAL individual title the week before, won states as just a sophomore. Beveridge said Jungling had a high ceiling as a freshman, but he improved his consistency considerably heading into his sophomore year. It paid off all season.
“I went into Thursday with the mentality I was going to win this thing,” Jungling said. “I didn’t expect to win, but I went in with a positive attitude.
“It was really exciting to finish out the season with that last high.”
