During the holidays, the clay target shooting team travelled to Christchurch to compete in the annual South Island Secondary Schools and NZ Secondary Schools Clay Shooting Nationals. The tournament was held over three days, with the South Island competition shot on day one, nationals on day two and skeet/regionals on day three. The reports are as follows:

Day One:

The team posted several excellent scores throughout the morning. In the Single Rise event, Kane Stirling (Year 12) and Tom Storey (Year 11) shot 20/20 and Alex Purdie (Year 13) and Alex Quested (Year 11) both shot 19/20. Tom and Kane both proceeded on to the finals in the afternoon. 

The points event was broken into two separate competitions, the team (a combination of all five shooters' scores) and the individual event. The team event ranks each school and places them in an overall national position.

Top scores were posted by all of our shooters: Alex Purdie shot a possible 60/60, Kane Stirling (59), Tom Storey (56), Jack Ward (57), and Alex Quested (52). The combined score was a suburb 284/300. At the conclusion of this round, St Paul's placed second and received a silver medal.

Alex Purdie’s perfect score allowed him to proceed through to the individual final shoot-offs. The single barrel event saw the best scores posted by Alex Purdie with 9/10 and Tom Storey and Kane Stirling both with 8/10.

The medal shoot-offs in the afternoon ended with Kane Stirling placing eighth and Tom Storey placing eleventh in the single rise. In the other shoot-off, Alex Purdie gained the bronze medal in the individual points event.

Day Two:

The national competition commenced with the same sequence of events as the previous day. The main difference is that there are a greater number of targets for each competition. The best single rise scores were posted by Alex Purdie and Jack Ward with 24/25.

The points event was once again a great team performance. Tom Storey shot the possible 75/75, Alex Purdie (72), Jack Ward (71), Kane Stirling (71), and Alex Quested (66). The combined score of 355/375 gained the team the bronze medal.

In the afternoon, Tom Storey continued his fine form taking the individual bronze medal in the points event.

Day Three:

Alex Purdie was selected for the Auckland/Waikato regional team and continued to perform to an excellent standard at this level.

This was one of our most successful tournaments. Our team was consistently ranked in the top three throughout New Zealand the team also gained two individual bronze medals. A large number of personal bests were attained by members of the team. Each and every one of them can be justly proud of what they have achieved.