PNBHS NEWS

Clay Target Shooting Nationals

 
Picture of Ella Mitchell
Clay Target Shooting Nationals
by Ella Mitchell - Wednesday, 17 October 2018, 7:11 PM
 

Clay Target Shooting Nationals

10 of our shooters travelled to Christchurch at the start of the holidays for three days of shooting. This included the South Island DTL champs on Saturday, the National DTL champs on Sunday then the South Island and National Skeet champs on Monday. There were a little over 300 shooters and 60 teams from approximately 40 schools represented.

After a rather slow start to the season, our lads had been shooting much more consistently in recent times. There was some confidence that if all five shooters in the A Team could pull it together on the same day, we could do well.

The South Island DTL Championships:

Saturday dawned fine, sunny and still - perfect shooting conditions. The first event - Single Rise - did not go well with most of the boys dropping at least one target. The team event - Points Score - also went poorly with the boys putting up a score that was well below their best. Initially, this seemed pretty bad, but by the end of the day there was a growing realisation, by almost all of the competitors and teams in attendance, that scores were not were they should be. Everyone was shooting below par! Was this due to the cheap targets the club had chosen to use for the weekend? More on that later.

National Championships:

Sunday was almost a carbon copy of Saturday with only a couple of lads shooting ‘possibles’ in any one event and our A team seemingly well off the pace in the teams event. Like Saturday, our final total was not that far behind other Super 8 schools who are usually right in contention.

Among the few individual highlights were Max Edwards and Reagan Shaw ( Reagan captaining our B team ) who made the five person Wellington region rep team. These are selected by Fish and Game region, hence we are part of the wider Wellington Area.

More impressively, Max Edwards was again selected in the five person North Island DTL team.

North Island and New Zealand Skeet:

Monday saw the boys stay on for both the South Island and New Zealand Skeet Championships. Henry Bennik shot well in the South Island event placing 2nd boys. He and Max Edwards were in contention for the two-man-teams event but were pipped at the post in a ‘count back’ - as there was no time to run shoot offs because people had to leave and catch planes.

On reflection, the entire weekend was not as positive as we would have hoped. This was the first time in six years that we did not finish in the top five teams. Yes, the cheap Spanish targets did not help, but everyone there shot them - so we can only compare our outcomes with those we consider our like. While our team totals were disappointing, they were only 15 – 20 points ( out of 300 ) behind the schools we usually compare ourselves to. While only the top three teams are officially ranked, we would still be comfortably in the top 15 – 20 teams nationwide.

- By Mr Higgie.