CHAD Ziadie was crowned national shotgun champion for the third time after the scores were tallied at the end of the Jamaica Skeet Club’s National Shotgun Championship (NSC), which ran over several months at different venues across the island. The championship featured four different shooting disciplines, namely 5-Stand, FITASC, Super Sporting and Sporting Clay.

Zaidie was 26 when he became the youngest shooter to win the National Shotgun Championship in 2022. He returned to the top of the sport in 2024 to be crowned champion for the second time. In 2025 he hovered near the top but ended the season as the A Class champion. While he was pleased with that, he never stopped aiming for the top and this year he returned to the summit for the third time.

He bagged 432 birds out of a possible 500 during the championship, while scoring 94 in 5-Stand and 91 in FITASC to win those shooting disciplines. His Super Sporting score of 80 placed him in the top 10 and his 167 Sporting Clay score was good enough for top six.

Ziadie was very happy with the win.

“It feels good. Relief. I mean the competition this year was very tight; as a matter of fact, Aliana [McMaster] charged back from 13 behind to only lose by three. It just shows you how tough the competition was this year,” said Ziadie.

“I faced some difficult challenges this weekend. My gun started to give me issues and I had to actually switch back to my old gun, so it felt very good to finish on top, going through those difficulties this weekend,” he added.

Aliana McMaster scored 429 to bag the runner-up spot in the National Shotgun Championship. She also topped the Ladies category for the fourth time and won the Juniors category as well.

Chad Ziadie aims at a target during this year’s National Shotgun Championship, on the way to being crowned the 2026 National Shotgun Champion at the Worthy Park Sugar Estate in Ewarton, St Catherine, recently.

For her, the secret to her performance is “the joy of the sport. I can’t say anything more than that. That’s the only reason how I was able to keep my head focused and in the game and shooting well. It was just by coming out and having fun”.

The class champions who tallied points across the four disciplines were: A Class – Roman Tavares-Finson – 426; B Class – Rahjir DaCosta – 399; C Class – Chris Clarke – 353; D Class – Toni Barnes – 339; E Class – Neesa DaCosta – 338; Ladies and Juniors Class – Aliana McMaster – 429; Sub Juniors Class – Rheis McMaster – 342; Hunters or Beginners Class – Zander James – 255.

Additionally Geoffrey Ziadie – 387 copped the Senior Champion title, Robert Yap Foo – 381, bagged the Veteran Champion title, and nine-time national shotgun champion and former Jamaica Skeet Club president Ian Banks – 387, took the Super Veteran Champion title.

President of the Jamaica Skeet Club Justin Samuda was pleased with the high-quality competition during the championship as well as the record number of competitors.

“So it was a really good turnout. We have had a lot of growth. The NSC, which usually didn’t attract the numbers that a club shoot would attract, this year we had 152 shooters that competed in some level of the NSC. That’s up from last year, which was about a hundred and thirty something shooters, which last year was a record, so this year it’s an increase. So the club is growing and vibrant and the committee remains on top of things and so we go up from here,” said Samuda.

He said that the challenge for the club was to manage the growth of the sport especially at its current facility in Portmore with its physical constraints.

Samuda announced that a new class will be formed to consist of the top 15 gunners from this year’s NSC.