DARREN GOES ONE BETTER

                        Allan Bott - Ashley Sharman - Darren Parsons - Michele Conway

A hot and muggy cloud covered Northampton Shooting Ground welcomed the 36 entrants plus a few million thunder flies to the Regional Skeet Doubles Championships; incidentally this was the second highest attendance for this event in its history.

Nick Faram (Northants) squad one peg one kicked things off and posted a 95 to give the day a bench mark score to aim at, Steve Smith quickly overcame that going a couple of clays better and then Les Sperling (Northants) pushed the total one higher with a 98, Les got the perfect start with 50 ex 50 and just let a single clay fly by unhindered on each of the last two rounds.

Never one to miss a wager I swiftly took a bet with Les that nobody would overcome his score, a dangerous thing on reflection as there were plenty of heavyweights of this discipline still too shoot.

Darren Parsons and Mike Bradley both from Suffolk gave me a scare by matching Les’s score but the rest of the field of competitors were leaking targets and no threat to the top three.

In the shoot off Les was eliminated after a couple of rotations and it took another couple more rotations to separate Mike and Darren despite Mike giving a chance to Darren to clinch the title by missing one off the middle, the next miss by Mike was duly punished to give Darren the title going one better than two weeks ago as he finished runner up in the English Skeet again after a shoot off.

In the Ladies division it was nice to see four Ladies battling for the honours and it was Michele Conway (Camb’s) who took the title on a worthy score of 93 just ahead of fellow County shooter Liz Green, next best was Bex Lee from Northants who finished on 87.

In his final year as a Junior Ashley Sharman (Northants) signed out with yet another Regional title dominating the competition finishing well clear of nearest rival Loz Slater (Northants) with a score of 95.  Editor;- we have subsequently discovered that Ashley was awarded the gold medal in error as he is no longer a Junior, the medal will in due course be awarded to Loz Slater from Northants,the East Mids CPSA would like to apologise to Ashley and Loz for any embarrasment or dissapointment this may have been caused.

The Veterans Shoot Off - Paul Sharman (Ref)

Veterans had to be decided by a shoot off with Michele Conway’s score of 93 being matched by Allan Bott from Leicestershire and it took just one rotation for Allan to take the honours when Michele missed off peg 5.

Many thanks must go to Northampton Shooting Ground for hosting this event; the targets ran on rails and hardly a no bird in sight.

ALL PRIZE MONEY COLLECTED.