SHAUN Barnes and Aliana McMaster were crowned respective champions after the scores were tallied at the end of the 2025 Motul National Shotgun Championship (NSC). The event ran over several months at different venues and featured four different shooting disciplines (5-Stand, FITASC, Super Sporting and Sporting Clay).

Barnes copped his seventh championship crown, after falling short a number of years, while McMaster successfully defended the women’s title for the third-consecutive time.

Barnes bagged 434 birds out of a possible 500 during the championship while topping 5-Stand and FITASC with scores of 91 and 95, respectively. His Super Sporting score of 85 placed him in the top 10 of that category while the 163 he posted after the two-day Sporting Clay final was good enough to allow him to celebrate with the championship trophy at the top of the podium.

“It’s a really good feeling. I have been putting my efforts into spreading my talents through coaching, and it is good now to be finally back on the podium,” said Barnes.

He theorised that focusing on his craft this year was the key to him taking back the championship.

“As a coach, I have to be paying attention to a lot of what my students are doing. So, now that I was separated from them, I got the opportunity to focus on myself for the past couple of weeks and, as a result of that, I think that’s what gave me the championship this year.”

Former national shotgun champion Christian Sasso was just six shots behind after bagging 426 birds to take the runner-up spot.

Aliana McMaster dominated the women’s category with a top score of 410 while her mother and former national shotgun champion Wendy McMaster copped the runner-up spot after posting a final score of 359. Aliana’s scores were 5-Stand (82), FITASC (87), Super Sporting (88), and Sporting Clays (153).

Aliana was ecstatic about her performance.

“You focus on so many things and you really try to achieve your goals, and when you really are able to just go after what you want and achieve it and overcome all your challenges, it’s really a phenomenal feeling that I can’t even describe,” she said.

“It’s definitely a lot of pressure, a lot of consistency [is] mandatory. It definitely takes a lot out of the shooters, and it’s over the span of a few months, maybe two to three, and then you go into a 200-bird match, so that’s definitely a challenge for anybody, really. So, to come up, come out on top of that, it’s honestly just a great feeling. I can’t explain it properly,” said Aliana.

President of the Jamaica Skeet Club, Justin Samuda was pleased with the attendance during the championship and the title sponsorship support of motor oil lubricant brand Motul.

“The Jamaica Skeet Club is fortunate to have a very young, dynamic management committee, the vice-president, the treasurer, everyone… there’s a lot of energy in the room and we’re not short of ideas.

“We had the largest attendance we’ve had for the national championship in as many years that I can remember. I attribute that to the sport being alive and well and the efforts that we’ve been making as a team,” he said.

“They [Motul] came on board early on in the NSC and they’ve been present the whole way through with us. We thank them for all their efforts,” Samuda added.