Bowers finishes 2nd at Leagues

She may not be an allstar, but Jada Bender of Manheim Township, like her team, is a Lancaster- Lebanon Rifle League champion.

Which would she rather be? An all-star for her regular season record or a league champion, besting a field of 48 shooters at the league championships Saturday at Conestoga Valley High School?

“To me, it doesn’t really matter. I just like the whole experience of being here with my friends and shooting,” Bender said. “So, it really doesn’t matter if I got in first place or last.”

Not a surprising response considering Bender’s easy-going nature and the close-knit culture of high school rifle shooting.

But then, after a moment or two of reflection, Bender offered that “it feels really awesome.”

Bender, who had a 98.16 scoring average during the regular dual-match season to fall just outside the top 10 “all-star” status, scored a perfect 200 with four dead-center hits, including center hits on her first and last shot, to edge No. 1 All-Star Brianna Bowers of Ephrata, who scored a 200 with two centers.

Ben Fahrney of Manheim Township recorded a championship-high five centers, but missed a perfect 200 and the league title by the width of a human hair.

Bender and Farhney led Manheim Township to the league championship team title with a league-record 994 points and 12 centers. The Blue Streaks, who won the regular season team title with a 12-2 record, placed three shooters in the top five and five in the top 13.

Ephrata finished second with 988 points, one better than Elizabethtown and two better than Manheim Central.

Shooting in the second wave of six, Bowers, who recorded a 99.67 out of a perfect 100 scoring average during the regular season, put up a score that stood for almost an hour.

Then Bender took aim in the Relay E — the sixth wave of eight shooters.

“I knew the first one was in (the center) and the second was close, and I said ‘OK, I got this’,” Bender said. “Then when I was done shooting, I looked at my target and the one I thought might have been (a center) was touching the center dot and I thought to myself, ‘I might really have this.’ ”

Bender admitted to being slightly surprised by the end result, but her coach wasn’t.

“She’s an excellent shooter,” Township coach Tom Rutledge said. “She performs well under pressure because she’s so calm. She’s calm in everything she does.

“In this type of tournament pressure, when only two of your targets need plugging, that speaks to how strong a shooter you are.”

A plug is a device used to confirm a center hit.

Shooting early in the competition, Bowers had a long wait alone with her thoughts.

“I was excited,” she said of the score she posted. “I was excited too to see how it all would turn out. It’s nerve-wracking, though.

“I’m really happy with what I got, happy to place second. Jada deserved it.”

Fahrney, an All-Star with a 99.33 scoring average, had little trouble reconciling his thirdplace finish.

“It’s crazy to play a sport where fractions of millimeters determine first from third,” he said. “I came to this tournament with a good attitude. It’s my senior year. ... I was just trying to make every shot mean the most it could.”

In addition to Bowers and Fahrney, Mathew Risbon, Elizabethtown; Nicole Johnson, Ephrata; Brayden Goff, Manheim Central; Hana Musser, MT; Alex Stoudt, Conestoga Valley; Hunter Modene, Manheim Township; Sawyer Boll, Ephrata; and Graham Wolf, Manheim Township earned all-star status.