Students shoot to top
Two Aparima College students missed their flight home but the inconvenience was soon forgotten when they received national and South Island titles at the New Zealand Secondary Schools’ Clay Target Shooting Championships.
The three-day championships finished in Christchurch on Monday, with students Rhys Horrell and Thomas Ronald, and Thomas’s mother, Leigh Ronald, booked to fly home at 6.15pm. However, they were unable to catch the flight back to Invercargill because some competitions were running late and Thomas was still competing.
It didn’t bother Thomas and Rhys as they were looking forward to receiving the South Island Skeet Team Champions Award.
‘‘There was no way they were going to miss the prizegiving ... what they did was priceless,’’ Leigh said.
The boys didn’t know they had also won the New Zealand Skeet Team Champions title until it was announced at the prizegiving.
Thomas, on his own account, was named South Island Overall Skeet Champion and he finished third in the national skeet section. Despite a few nerves, Thomas shot a perfect score of 25 out of 25 in the South Island competition.
‘‘It was a pretty good achievement,’’ he said.
Blake Turner, from Aparima College, won the national single barrel in the down the line competition. He and Aparima College’s Kori Horrell, along with three students from Central Southland College – Phillip Wilson, Max McCallum and Roy Schuurams – shot for Southland in the regional teams event. Southland finished third of 13.
Kori was selected for the South Island team, which beat the North Island in another competition.
Central Southland College shooters Phillip Wilson, Max McCallum, Roy Schuurams, Luke McMaster and Josh Hart won the New Zealand Team Down The Line title. Other Southland schools represented at the championships were Southland Boys’ High School and Verdon College.
About 320 shooters from throughout New Zealand took part.
To be good at clay target shooting, competitors had to be committed and disciplined, Leigh Ronald said.