MARTIN, Tenn. - Three members of The University of Tennessee at Martin rifle team, Kaitlin Chaffin, Jennifer Garbina and Kelsea Hunt, have recently received athletic scholarships.

Chaffin has been named the recipient of the Ernest Rezabek scholarship while Jennifer Garbina and Kelsea Hunt earned the Bettye Giles/Nadine Gearin scholarship.

Garbina and Hunt will be juniors in the fall, while Chaffin will be a senior for head coach Bob Beard - who oversees perennially one of the best teams in the country (UT Martin has finished in the top-20 in the nation in 27 out of Beard's 28 years at the helm).

Chaffin, from Murfreesboro, has put together quite a career for the Skyhawk rifle team. In 2007-08, she was named as UT Martin's first Ohio Valley Conference Freshman of the Year. This past season, she was named to the All-OVC air rifle first team and was also named to the Collegiate Rifle Coaches Association (CRCA) All-Academic team. She has found her name on the OVC Commissioner's Honor Roll twice (2008, 2009), and fired career-highs in both smallbore (569 at the NRA Sectionals/NCAA Qualifier in Murray) and air rifle (585 at the OVC Championships in Murray) this past spring.

A native of Bismarck, N.D., Garbina has enjoyed a stellar two years in the Skyhawk rifle program. She too earned a place on the CRCA All-Academic team last spring, and was an OVC Commissioner's Honor Roll recipient in 2009. In air rifle, she has shot a career-high score of 571 on two occasions (as a freshman at Memphis and last season in the OVC Championships), while her smallbore career-best score is 558, which was shot at the NRA Sectionals/NCAA Qualifier last season.

Hunt, from Ozark, Mo., has been one of the most consistent shooters in her two seasons in the UT Martin rifle program. This past season she capped off a brilliant sophomore campaign. She was named to the All-OVC air rifle first team and the All-OVC smallbore second team. She has shown tremendous improvement, as her scores of 584 in air rifle and 571 in smallbore at the OVC Championships last season were career-highs.


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