The Jamaica Skeet Club’s National Sporting Clays Championship is off and running at the True Juice Estate in St Catherine.

The competition is a 200-bird shoot over two days, with 100 targets to be shot on Saturday and the other on Sunday at the same property. The winner of the sporting clays championship will gain valuable points towards determining national shotgun champion, which is determined based on the results of four shooting disciplines – Fitasc, 5Stand, super sporting, and sporting clay.

The national sporting clays defending champions are Roman Tavares-Finson and Aliana McMaster. Tavares-Finson was the top shooter with 174 over the two days, while McMaster shot 146 over the same period to cop the Ladies’ category in 2022.

When all the points were tabulated for the four events, Chad Ziadie and Wendy McMaster were declared the national shotgun champions. Ziadie was the overall champion and McMaster was the Ladies’ champion.

Competition for the sporting clays champion is expected to be very stiff this year, especially with the new format which pits the top five shooters in each category from A to E as well as Hunters or Beginners, Ladies, Junior and Sub Juniors to be ‘squadded’ together each day.

The top five male shooters who will be squadded together are Ray McMaster (number one rank) and Craig Simpson (number two rank) based on this year’s performance to date. They are excellent shooters but have never won the national shotgun championship. The other three shooters in the squad are all previous national shotgun champions in Ian Banks, nine-time champion; Shaun Barnes, six-time champion; and Christian Sasso, four-time champion.

Last year’s national shotgun champion at 26 years (at the time) is the youngest winner to date and he (Chad Ziadie) will be going all out to defend his title. “My expectations this weekend are high. I am going in there feeling confident. I am working from behind this year again so it’s just to stay relaxed and focused and try make the push from Saturday, but all in all the competition this year is tight. I just look forward to finishing the year off strong.”

Today’s second day will be a shotgun start at 10:00 am with the shooters competing from 16 stations.