National Rifle League (NRL)

Origins of Precision Rifle Competition

The NRL was founded in 2016 by Travis Ishida, Tyler Frehner, and Brittney Weldon. It did not invent the sport it sanctions.

Precision rifle shooting as a competitive discipline emerged around 2010 as a grassroots offshoot of tactical rifle training -- competitors mixing positional shooting with field terrain, barricades, and unconventional shooting positions. The word "tactical" eventually got dropped because the sport had clearly become its own thing, not a training exercise.

NRL's Strategic Positioning

By the time the NRL formed, the Precision Rifle Series (PRS) was already operating and providing structure to the sport. The NRL entered as a second major sanctioning body, deliberately carving out a different niche -- more community-oriented match culture, explicit outreach to women and youth, and a multi-tiered competition pathway designed to onboard new shooters without throwing them straight into a national-level match.

The organization's centerfire program got traction first. As it grew, Ishida and Frehner recognized that the cost and recoil of centerfire precision rifles were keeping a lot of people on the sideline.

In response, they launched NRL22 -- the rimfire version of the same discipline -- using .22 LR to bring the entry cost and intimidation factor down significantly. NRL22x followed in 2020 as a more demanding rimfire option for shooters who had outgrown the standard NRL22 format.

Key milestones in precision rifle competition and NRL development

The NRL describes its focus as safety, education, and empowering both competitors and the industry around the sport. As a nonprofit, it operates without returning profit to shareholders, reinvesting instead into program development, ambassador roles, and match infrastructure.

Beyond the competitive side, the NRL has made deliberate efforts to build an actual community around its matches rather than just a scoreboard. Match directors are encouraged -- not just allowed, but actively encouraged -- to organize social events after competition. Common post-match activities include:

• Bowling nights
• Pig roasts
• Karaoke tournaments
• Whiffle ball competitions

The intent is to make the sport stick for people who show up once, not just for the competitors who were already going to keep coming back.

The organization also runs an educational outreach program developed by ambassador Marchand Hovrud, with curriculum that has been taken into classrooms and community groups to explain the sport. Dedicated Young Guns and Women's ambassadors handle outreach to those specific groups.

Competition Pathway Structure

The NRL runs four distinct competition tracks, structured as a ladder a shooter can climb as their skills and equipment budget develop.

NRL Competition Pathway - The tiered progression system from entry level to national championship

NRL22 is the entry point. Everything runs on .22 LR -- same stage format, same positional shooting, same timed engagement philosophy as centerfire, but at a fraction of the ammunition cost and with essentially no recoil. Targets are scaled appropriately for rimfire ballistics. This is where most new precision shooters and junior competitors start.

NRL22x sits above NRL22 in difficulty. It allows any course of fire at any distance where hits can be called reliably, which opens up the format considerably. It's designed for rimfire shooters who have the fundamentals down and want a more open-ended challenge without jumping to centerfire.

Centerfire Programs

NRL Centerfire national matches are two-day events open to any competitor, including non-members. Stages typically run 90 seconds of par time with 10 rounds per stage, engaging steel field targets from 100 to 800 yards -- though some matches include targets at extreme distances, including mile shots. Each stage has a briefing, and competitors shoot with their squad.

Scores combine raw hits with placement to generate a national ranking. The NRL National Championship is invite-only -- you have to qualify through match performance during the season.

Stage design varies widely and is largely left to the match director's creativity within safety constraints. Competitors have engaged targets from:

• Helicopters
• Old vehicles
• Purpose-built barricades

You don't always know in advance what you'll be shooting from -- some match directors brief everything, others keep it close to the vest until you're on the stage.

Border War Series matches are one-day regional centerfire events. They pit competitors from different U.S. regions against each other and serve as the practical bridge between the rimfire programs and full national-level centerfire competition. They're less commitment than a two-day national match and more structured than a club-level local match.

NRL Hunter is a separate platform (nrlhunter.org) that applies precision rifle competition concepts to a hunting-context format. It operates as its own match management system and targets the overlap between competitive precision shooters and hunters.

The NRL also maintains a loaner rifle program that lets people try the sport at matches without owning suitable equipment. This matters more than it might sound -- a quality precision rifle setup for centerfire can run several thousand dollars before you buy a round of ammunition.

Equipment and Caliber Considerations

Caliber-wise, most centerfire competitors run .30 caliber or smaller, with various 6mm variants being the dominant choice at the competitive level for their combination of flat trajectory, low recoil, and manageable barrel life.

Membership Requirements

Non-members can attend and compete in NRL centerfire matches -- membership is not required to show up and shoot. However, only members have their scores tracked for national ranking purposes, and only ranked competitors can qualify for and receive invitations to the National Championship.

NRL22 club membership is handled at the club level, with individual clubs setting their own local dues. The national NRL22 membership connects competitors to the national scoring system.

Benefits Structure

Membership benefits center on score tracking, national ranking placement, access to the championship qualification pool, and connection to the broader NRL community and match calendar. Sponsorship and ambassador program access flows through the membership structure as well.

Current membership pricing is available directly at nrl22.org, as pricing tiers are subject to change by season.

The NRL's most concrete achievement is structural: building a tiered competition pathway that didn't exist before 2016.

Building a tiered competition pathway that didn't exist before 2016. The rimfire-to-centerfire pipeline gives a shooter a clear route from their first match to the national stage.

The NRL22 program in particular has become one of the more accessible entry points into organized precision shooting in the country. The combination of .22 LR economics with a legitimate competition format and national score tracking gives it real staying power for competitors who might otherwise bounce off the expense of centerfire.

IPRF Wikipedia data notes that U.S. precision rifle competitors grew from approximately 164 active participants in 2012 to over 15,000 by 2020. The NRL, alongside PRS, accounts for a significant portion of that growth during the period it has been operating.

The NRL operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Travis Ishida has been identified as founder and a primary spokesperson for the organization. Tyler Frehner co-founded the organization alongside Ishida and has been involved in program development, particularly in the NRL22 side.

Match directors operate with meaningful autonomy in stage design, which is by intent. The NRL sets the framework -- par times, scoring rules, safety standards, sanctioning requirements -- but deliberately leaves creative latitude to the people running individual matches. This keeps the match experience varied and prevents the sport from going stale through over-standardization.

Volunteers handle significant operational load at the match level. The ambassador program is a structured volunteer role, not a paid staff position.

NRL vs PRS Distinction

The NRL exists in direct parallel to the Precision Rifle Series (PRS), which was the first organization to provide formal structure to precision rifle competition in the U.S. Both sanction the same general discipline. This creates some confusion in terminology -- "PRS" refers both to the Precision Rifle Series organization and to precision rifle shooting as a discipline, and NRL matches are technically a type of sanctioned PRS-format match. The NRL and PRS are separate organizations with separate match calendars, scoring systems, and championship structures.

The NRL's rimfire program (NRL22) operates somewhat independently from the centerfire side in day-to-day terms, with its own club network and competition calendar, though both fall under the NRL organizational umbrella.

International Connections

The International Precision Rifle Federation (IPRF), founded in 2021, serves as the international governing body for the discipline. The U.S. arm under IPRF is the United States Precision Rifle Association (USPRA). The NRL and PRS both feed into the competitive talent pool that competes at IPRF-sanctioned international events, though the organizations are institutionally separate.

The NRL has no formal affiliation with the National Rifle Association (NRA) despite superficial naming similarity. They operate in entirely different lanes.

The NRL is worth understanding if you're anywhere near the precision rifle world -- and it's worth joining if you're competing more than a couple of times a year.

Centerfire vs Rimfire Value

For centerfire shooters, the national ranking system only matters to you if you care about your placement relative to the rest of the country. If you're shooting local matches for fun and skill development, non-member participation gets you on the range. If you want to know where you stand nationally, or if qualifying for the championship is on your list, membership is the path.

For rimfire shooters, NRL22 membership is a genuine value. The .22 LR economics already make this the cheapest way into organized precision shooting -- membership layers national score tracking and a real championship structure on top of a program you'd likely be shooting anyway. The entry cost for a capable NRL22 rifle is low enough that the membership cost is a rounding error in context.

Community Culture

The community-first approach is real, not marketing. The post-match event culture is something the NRL actually pushes at the organizational level, and match directors who run good social events do get recognized for it.

If you showed up to your first match alone and didn't know anyone, you'd probably leave knowing a few people. That's not guaranteed at every sanctioning body's events.

Geographic and Demographic Considerations

The main honest criticism of the NRL is geographic concentration. Matches skew toward the western U.S., and shooters in the upper Midwest or Southeast may find themselves driving significant distances to find NRL-sanctioned events.

That's improving as the sport grows, but it's still a real factor depending on where you live.

For women and junior shooters specifically, the NRL has done more structural work in this direction than most precision rifle organizations -- dedicated ambassadors, the rimfire pipeline as a lower-pressure entry point, and active match director encouragement around family-friendly formats. It's not perfect, but the intent is baked into the program design rather than being a PR afterthought.

If precision rifle competition is on your radar, NRL22 is the cheapest legitimate on-ramp to the sport that currently exists.

Bottom line: if precision rifle competition is on your radar, NRL22 is the cheapest legitimate on-ramp to the sport that currently exists. Start there, see if the format clicks, and the path forward is clearly marked.

• Juchnowski, Serena. "What is the National Rifle League?" Let's Go Shooting, National Shooting Sports Foundation. letsgoshooting.org
• "International Precision Rifle Federation." Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
• "NRL22 Competition Guide: How Does The League Work?" Widener's Reloading & Shooting Supply. wideners.com
• National Rifle League official site: nrl22.org
• NRL Hunter platform: nrlhunter.org
• Gunsite Academy NRL22 program page: gunsite.com

Last Updated: February 24, 2026