Cambs Take the Sporting by Storm

Paul Zaitschenko on the tower - Jaymee Thompson looks on

Once again a changed format for the Intercounties Sporting at Kegworth, the change being in response to requests from East Midlands Reps.

The event run in squads was back to the usual 100 targets, but this time everyone starting on Peg 1, and as we all know there is no one size fits all solution to the Sporting conundrum of how best to run a sporting shoot. Some people prefer the freedom of just turning up whenever, shooting stands in whichever way they fancy, others preferring the more regimented fashion of shooting in squads, and even more so shooting the stands in order. That system though has its pitfalls, targets in the sun can put a shooter at a significant disadvantage if they just strike unlucky.

The final unknown is the weather in general, I’m sure we have all at some time said, I shot it on the wrong day, should have shot it yesterday. Well to a degree the shooters of Cambs and Northants blew that myth out of the water, both shot it on the Saturday in strong winds and driving rain, and finished first and second in the Senior team competition, whilst the Sunday shooters had much the better weather.

Cambridge finished well clear of Northants to take the title, Cambs finishing on 519 and Northants on 507. Top scorer for Cambs was Steve Grant on 92, backed up by a wealth of consistent scores by Phil Gray, Robert Allen, Mark Bowes, Matt Cole, Dave Mennie & Steve Thexton.

Top scorer for Northants was Kim Wan on 93, with good scores from Matt Shepherd, Simon Vogel, Steve Smith, Neil Faulkner, Mick Russell, Paul Cooper & Oliver Bradshaw, enough for them to claim runners up.

In Ladies it was all about Lincolnshire, Rosie Brumby leading the way with an impressive 85 and backed up well by Mary Burdass on 75, Shona Marshall making her debut for the team a winning one, also 16-year-old Jaymee Thompson who not only made her debut for Lincs, it was also her first ever competitive shoot, not a bad way to start and we look forward to seeing her progress.

In Juniors, Northants added to their junior titles with Henry Collins scoring superbly on 90 to not only win the Junior High Gun Trophy but help his county to victory, George Whatton, Steven Mynes and James Whitlock completed the winning line up to give them a winning score of 152, well clear of their nearest rivals.

Finally, Bedfordshire Vets took the title and took full advantage of the Leicestershire duo of John Wells and Steve Brightwell unable to attend, saying that Leicestershire put a strong team out and pushed the Bed’s quartet all the way. John Stanton top scored for Beds, with Fred Kidd, Jim Munday and M Jenkins all scoring well to get them over the line.

Many thanks to the 187 shooters that once again came out to shoot for their county, despite clashes with some high profile shoots. As ever the fixture list is a bigger problem year on year, there are very few free dates available, and as we have to publish our fixtures in February to allow counties to plan their calendar, we are vulnerable to changes of date made by the CPSA or the introduction of new sponsored shoots that inevitably take the focus off our shoots.

We will though as we do every year try and do our best for the region.

Things are hotting up in the Directors Trophy with a handfull of points between the counties after 3 events.

Check out the latest standings - /east-midlands/directors-trophy