Mid Canterbury target shooters Sandy Bennett, Nate Woods and Katelyn Wilson shot for New Zealand this month in an international postal shoot against England.
Bennett represented the New Zealand women’s, and Woods and Wilson New Zealand juniors.
The three are members of Target Shooting Mid Canterbury who took an 11-strong contingent of smallbore shooters to the Target Shooting New Zealand Indoor Island Nationals at Whanganui. It was North Island vs South Island.
Association president Nina McKenzie said the three shooters had their postal on the Sunday following the August 17-18 event, mostly dominated by North Island shooters.
The postal shoot results would be known once the English season got under way.
She said during the competition the Mid Canterbury contingent had some excellent targets but the South Island side were below their best.
‘‘The range presented some challenges that required some gear modifications and results were not quite where we would normally expect,’’ she said.
‘‘Nate lit up the junior match, shooting his first ‘possible’ (score of 100) on his opening target. A perfect start. Katelyn (Wilson), Eliza (McKenzie) and Madi (Tourle) all started strongly, and Colin Taylor and Sandy Bennett opened well in the veterans too,’’ she said.
Despite some excellent individual targets when the final results rolled in, the North had taken both the veterans and junior matches.
‘‘We were very excited to see Nate and Katelyn achieve their maiden New Zealand honours, being named to the New Zealand junior team – after some really fantastic shooting from both,’’ she said.
In the women’s, men’s and open matches, the South were outclassed.
The North also got a clean sweep of the teams’ matches.
‘‘Sandy shot consistently well in the women’s match to make the New Zealand team and narrowly missed the New Zealand open team,’’ she said.
‘‘Mid Canterbury had the most members of any association in the country – given we are a small association, we are incredibly proud of this,’’ McKenzie said.
‘‘This is a high-pressure weekend, and the first look at top level competition, for some of our members.
‘‘Whilst the results on the weekend were not quite where we would have liked them, as always the team operated beautifully together, had a great deal of learning, and represented our area very proudly.’’
