Charlotte McKenzie and Shania Harrison-Lee from the Smallbore Rifle Shooting Team. Photo supplied.Charlotte McKenzie and Shania Harrison-Lee from the Smallbore Rifle Shooting. Photo supplied.No hint of slowing down.

Mid Canterbury continues to be a hotbed of smallbore shooting chops at both school and then senior club levels, and now the national governing body is inquiring as to what the secret is in this neck of the woods.

It was another prosperous year in 2019 for the district’s young guns.

Ashburton College’s group of shooters, led by national representative master shooter Shania Harrison-Lee won the New Zealand Secondary Schools’ Shooting Championship (SSS Champs) for the fifth consecutive year in 2019.

The team finished 19 points higher than it did the previous year.

At regional level, the Mid Canterbury Association team went on to clinch the Andrew Faulkner Shield South Island team event in Oamaru.

This year’s event was scheduled to be held in Ashburton last month but was cancelled when Covid first hit the country.

Although the competitive opportunities for smallbore shooters had been limited, locals were still able to face off during postal shoots.

The AshColl team was named Outstanding Junior Sports Team of the year at the recent Mid Canterbury Sports Awards for the second consecutive year.

Always in the local sports awards discussion, a second straight win attests to the shooting prowess in the wider region.

“It definitely made our juniors smile,” Harrison-Lee said.

“We’re such a family-orientated bunch.

“We’re just waiting for the trophy now.”

The Mid Canterbury club also had several talented shooters on the rise.

Charlotte McKenzie is in her second competitive season of shooting, putting together dominant displays in B grade.

At the recent Canterbury Championships, Harrison-Lee won the master and open grades while McKenzie was B grade champion.

As far as upcoming events, questions marks hang over this year’s New Zealand Secondary School Shooting Championships with the competition’s final round earmarked for next month.

With success comes rising expectations and the Mid Canterbury teams approach each event with the anticipation that they will perform well.

Harrison-Lee said the region was regularly challenging the Manawatu as the pre-eminent shooting district in New Zealand, despite a significant disparity in shooting stocks.

“They have the highest number of competitive shooters in the country.

“We have about 32 members down in the club here, but in the Manawatu they have about 50 master grade shooters.”

Harrison-Lee is one of only a handful of master graders in the district alongside Sandy Bennett and Steve McArthur.

Target Shooting Mid Canterbury president Nina McKenzie said local success had fed off great collaboration between the school and clubs.

“We are very fortunate to have very good coaching and very good resources,” she said.

“It’s growing but it is a well-established sport (in this region).”

Although the sport regularly lost young shooters who leave the district for tertiary study, it remained a code that allowed people to return to, McKenzie said.

She added that Target Shooting New Zealand had reached out to its Mid Canterbury association around its success.

“There’s been a lot of questions put to us in recent times from our national body on how we’re doing so well, what we’re doing, why are we getting all of these top quality juniors when our association area size is relatively small,” she said.

“The bottom line is we’re really lucky to have really great, positive and generous members.”

By Adam Burns © The Ashburton Guardian - 14 August 2020