Alexander Pohlman ’25 qualified for the air rifle finals and placed eighth overall, and Lt. Col. Bill Bither was named Southern Conference Coach of the Year at the 2025 SoCon Rifle Championships in Statesboro, Georgia, Feb. 8, 2025.—Photo courtesy VMI Athletics.
For the second consecutive year, Lt. Col. Bill Bither was named Southern Conference Coach of the Year, this time after leading the men’s squad to a fourth-place finish and the women’s team to a fifth overall finish at the 2025 Southern Conference Rifle Championships at the Shooting Sports Education Center in Statesboro, Georgia, Feb. 8–9, 2025.
Collectively, the VMI mixed team placed fourth with an aggregate of 4541, while the women finished fifth, firing a 4512. The finishes top last year, in which the teams placed fifth and sixth, respectively. The 4512 by the women’s team upped last year’s total of 4494.
Individually, Alexander Pohlman ’25 highlighted the day for the Keydets, qualifying for the air rifle finals and placing eighth overall. Pohlman posted a strong score in the early relay before ending with a 586 and 41 center tens, just one point shy of seventh. Pohlman’s 1146 aggregate was just five points shy of 10th place overall.
Bither shares this year’s honor with Georgia Southern coach, Soren Butler, who led the Eagles to their fourth consecutive SoCon title. This is the third time in Bither’s career that he has earned the Southern Conference Coach of the Year honor (2024, 2020).
Ryan Harlow ’25 had the program’s second-best finish in the air rifle, shooting a 580 with 33 center tens to place 17th overall for that discipline. Wuyue Xie ’28 and Adrianna Sanders ’26 led the women’s squad, placing 19th and 21st with air rifle scores of 579 and 578, respectively.
Victoria Phillips ’25 (575) and Darian Tweedell ’27 (573) round out the top 25 in the air, with Emma Cameron ’25, Elizabeth Stann ’28, Kyle Kemp ’27, and Michael Annesi ’25 all competing for the Keydets.
To view the SoCon release, click here, and the smallbore recap, click here.
Editor’s Note: This article was first published on vmikeydets.com.
