Sports

Anchorage girls take aim at Division I riflery careers

Like the on-deck batter who goes through the same stretching ritual before each at-bat or the tennis player who bounces the ball a specific number of times before every serve, many competitive shooters perform a choreography of quirks before pulling the trigger.

Eighteen-year-old Cat Papasodora of Eagle River is one of them.

"I know how many times Cat blinks before a shot," said Scott Henderson, a coach with the Borealis Bullseye shooting club.

Papasodora always goes through the same routine, he said: two blinks, three blinks, pause, two blinks, take up the trigger slack, blink, FIRE!

"This is a sport that rewards OCD behavior," Henderson said.

It can also reward talent and dedication to training. Papasodora and Marina Noble, both high school seniors, have signed letters of intent to compete in NCAA Division I riflery next school year.

Papasodora, an Eagle River senior who for four years was one of the top shooters in the Anchorage School District's Cook Inlet Conference, is headed to Kentucky, a riflery powerhouse.

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Noble, a West High senior and another top CIC shooter, is going to Mississippi, which has sent women to the NCAA championships in each of the last four seasons.

It's the first time since 2011 that a Division I riflery team signed a shooter from Anchorage, according to Henderson. "It's pretty rare," he said

Although Papasodora and Noble both display habits and ticks that could be described as obsessive-compulsive, the pair is proof that riflery defies stereotypes, at least physically.

Papasodora is 5-foot-2 and shoots right-handed.

Noble is 6-foot-4 and shoots left-handed.

Papasodora is the natural. She excelled as soon as she started shooting air rifles as a high school freshman. On her fifth day on the range, Henderson said, Papasodora fired a perfect prone-position score of 100.

Papasodora is the star of the Bullseyes team. She has earned regional championships and this week she is competing in her fourth straight Junior Olympics. She is one of three Bullseyes shooters who qualified for the girls' national championships in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where she is joined by first-time qualifiers Noble and Emily VanNortwick of Chugiak. Next week, Tristan Henderson of Eagle River will compete at the boys' Junior Olympics.

The Bullseyes club provides opportunities for shooters to compete at regional and national events in the Lower 48, where Papasodora and Noble gained the attention of college coaches.

Noble said she got on Ole Miss's radar while competing out of state as a sophomore.

"They saw me and thought I was a senior, because I was so tall," she said. "They asked our coach, 'Who's the Amazon in green?' They kept their eye on me.''

Noble said the chance to compete in college is the result of a lot of work during high school.

"Cat has a lot of natural talent. I do not," she said. "I've put everything I have into it, and that's not to say she doesn't too."

Most months of the year, Noble and Papasodora spend hours each day at a shooting range. But success in a precision sport like shooting also requires a dedication to an unforgiving lifestyle.

"People think 'Shooting must be so easy,' '' Noble said. "I have friends who play soccer and they say, 'Why are you so tired? Why don't you get a coffee?' ''

But coffee isn't an option for serious shooters -- caffeine can make them shake, and a steady hand is a necessity for successful shooters.

"You have to watch what you eat, what you drink, how you sleep." Noble said. "Coffee makes you shake. Sugar makes you shake. If you eat at the wrong time, your blood sugar may be off, or you may be tired.

"It's really a neurotic sport, I have to say."

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In fact, a sport like riflery can be one big mind game.

"It's 90 percent mental," Papasodora said. "It's a lot of mental strength, mental toughness, and the determination to not give up. You need the ability to calm yourself down and focus, and you need to trust yourself."

Papasodora said she hopes to be a coach someday. She's already halfway there -- she frequently helps teammates with tips on technique and form, and she coaches little kids in the Borealis Bullseyes program.

Among the things she teaches new shooters is how to stay calm and keep their heart rates down -- skills that can come in handy away from the shooting range.

"Being able to calm myself down has helped me in school," Papasodora said. "I have testing anxiety so when I do a test, my heart rate goes up."

And so when it's time to take a test, she goes through a ritual reminiscent of the routine she follows before every shot she fires.

"I close my eyes, take deep breaths and focus on my heart rate," she said. "I focus on a point in my head and once I feel my heart rate slow down I open my eyes and I'm fine.

"I actually do better on tests."

Reach Beth Bragg at 257-4335 or bbragg@alaskadispatch.com.

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