The Armidale School’s Jack Chappell credits a steady hand, a good wind coach and challenging training for a near perfect score of 197.8 out of 200 in this year’s Athletics Association of Great Public Schools (AAGPSNSW) Shooting competition, earning him the title ‘King of the Range’ and a spot in the Combined AAGPS representative side.
Jack accrued the top overall point score of all shooters in the three-match competition, held at Hornsby Rifle Range on 22-23 July. In the 500m stage of the first match, the Rawson Cup, Jack got off to a cracking start, with two centres giving him a scoring of 35.2 out of 35 whilst in the 600m stage, recording 34.2/35.
Later in the day in the NRA Shield, he again found two centres, achieving 50.2 from 50. On the second and final day of competition for the Buchanan Shield, a 300m eight-shot deliberate stage followed by a snap application, Jack scored 39.2/40 and 39/40 respectively.
“The conditions were amazing. There was very little wind across the two days of competition and I have to give full credit to my wind coach and teammate Rory Finlayson who had the wind factor totally under control,” said Jack, a boarder from Glen Innes who is the school’s captain of shooting and has been a member of the TAS GPS team for three years.
“For the first time the team had a pre-competition training camp at Belmont Shooting Range in Brisbane where we were shooting in absolutely atrocious thirty-five kilometre winds. The old saying ‘train hard play easy’ was very applicable and that challenging training really put us in good stead,” he said.
Throughout the competition Jack shot the Ben McElroy Memorial Rifle, given by the families of the 2019 shooting team in honour of one of their members.
Jack’s result rewarded him with a place in the Combined AAGPS team which will compete in the Josephson Shield on 29 July against experienced under 25 shooters from three district rifle associations and two combined universities teams.
He also won the Bisley Bullet, a trophy for the best shooter between Sydney Boys’ High School, TAS and NEGS (who traditionally shoot alongside the GPS schools but did not field a team this year).
The other schools competing were overall winner Sydney Grammar School, The King’s School, The Scots College, Shore School, and Newington College.
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