Rugeley Rifle Club members supported the West Midlands leg of British Shooting’s Target Sprint Series today. Martyn, Mick and Michelle were on hand as stewards and range officers. The event took place on the outdoor ranges at the NSRA’s Aldersley Shooting Centre at the Aldersley Leisure Village.
Rugeley have been a huge supporter of British Shooting events in the Midlands, with members also volunteering at the British Schools Championship Finals.
Rugeley Rifle Club celebrated the past year’s achievements at their annual prize-giving on Friday night, with trophies presented by Councillor Sarah Elsom DL. The highlight of the evening was the surprise presentation of the NSRA Silver Award to Club Chairman Martyn Buttery. Martyn has long served on committee roles in the Club, as well as sitting on the Rifle Committee at the NSRA. He was instrumental in bringing the British Shooting School’s Shooting Championship Finals to Chase Leisure Centre – an event which has relied heavily on volunteers from Rugeley serving as range staff. In addition to prizes and trophies for shooting achievements, a number of discretionary awards were made. Megan Bamsey won the Captain’s Prize for achievements over the past year, including selection to represent GB at the 2023 ISSF Junior World Cup, and the Secretary’s Award to Russell Barlow for his outstanding support instructing and coaching within the club.
A £500 cheque was also presented to Rugeley and District Community First Responders, one of the club’s chosen charities. RADCFR maintain the defibrillator hosted on the outside of the club. This lifesaving piece of equipment was installed in 2019. Since then it has been activated six times, and used at least twice.
Rugeley members were out in force again at British Shooting’s Schools Rifle & Pistol Championship. With the finals held again at Cannock Leisure Centre.
Manning the registration desk, and serving as range officers, the team were visible across both days of the Championships. Rugeley member Abbigael Beech won the Junior 6yd Air Rifle event.
Rugeley Rifle Club is pleased to extend its trial of Warm Spaces on Sundays from 11am-4pm for over-65s.
Call in for a hot drink, a social atmosphere, food served by Vysions Youth Volunteering and a social atmosphere, plus the opportunity to try Benchrest shooting!
The club is open every Sunday from now until April, including December 24th!
Rugeley Rifle Club is delighted to have been registered as an NSRA Performance Club.
NSRA Performance Clubs are those with an ethos of competition and athlete development. Achieving recognition as a Performance Club is testament to the hard work by the club committee and members in developing the facilities to allow quality training activities – particularly the new club room, training building and availability of electronic targets at 10m and 50m. It also recognises the effort by the club’s volunteer instructors and coaches, not only in developing athletes, but also providing support and continued development for instructors and coaches.
We’re delighted to announce our newest social channel – the Fediverse! Using the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress, this site is now also an ActivityPub instance. All news posts from this site will be accessible, and users can follow our feed from their accounts on any federated server. Find us at “rugeleyrifleclub@www.rugeleyrifleclub.org.uk”.
ActivityPub is the foundation underlying a new type of social media, where users can run their own servers or join other public servers, which can all communicate with one another – think of it like email. You can send an email from an Outlook account to a Yahoo account. You are not limited to sending email only between Outlook addresses.
No single company controls the “fediverse” – the community of “federated” ActivityPub servers. Anyone can create or join a server – large or small – and follow their friends and interests on that server and other servers. There are a variety of different types of instance. Pixelfed is oriented towards image sharing, much like instagram. You may have heard of Mastodon in the news – which is more like Twitter. If you’re interested, the easiest route is to visit joinmastodon.org, pick a server (it really doesn’t matter which) and have an explore. mastodonapp.uk is a UK-oriented server, which may be a good place to start, but you can access accounts on any server from any other server and you can move your account later on if you want to.
Saturday saw the delayed Shooting Final from the August Youth Shooting Camp run in collaboration with Vysions Youth Volunteer Service. Participants worked their way through air rifle, air pistol and smallbore rifle for an aggregate contest.
Congratulations to Jessica and Hollie, who won a year’s free membership to Rugeley Rifle Club! A huge thanks to all the volunteers who helped run the Youth Camp and Final.
Zoltan Papp won Rugeley’s 2023 Through the Ranges competition on Sunday.
Shot Prone over 25yards, 50metres and 100yards, the competition tests shooter’s abilities indoor and out.
Rugeley member Rich Hemingway had a sterling weekend at Bisley, shooting for Wales and qualifying for the Final of the British Prone Championship (the “Earl Roberts Championship”) at the close of the NSRA’s 2023 National Meeting.
On Friday, Rich warmed up by comfortably making it through the First Stage of the Earl Roberts, placing 9th of the 50 who qualified. That afternoon he went on to shoot in the Home Countries International, competing for Wales against England and Scotland. Wales narrowly placed third, close behind Scotland. Rich had the second highest score in the Welsh team, just a point behind Sian Corish – who was awarded the “Tartan Dragon” trophy for highest Welsh scorer.
Rich Hemingway with the 2023 Welsh Home Countries Team
photo credit: Eleanor Shorey theshorey.co.uk
On Saturday morning, competitors took to the range for another early start to contest the Second Stage of the Roberts, from which 40 qualified to the final. Placing 27th, Richard entered his first Roberts Final, making him the first Rugeley or Staffordshire shooter to compete in the final for some years.
Shooting a Double Dewar course – 40 shots each at 50metres and 100yards – the wind picked up significantly, as is appropriate for championship finals! In gusty conditions, many competitors struggled to keep their scores above 190, with a smattering of big flyers (including 4s and 6s!) seen along the range, especially on the 100yard portion. Keeping their cool amongst all of them though was 2022 champion Lina Jones, who retained her title with a score of 772. Rich finished his debut Final with 756, placing him 20th.
Rugeley cleaned up at the Staffordshire County Championships on Sunday with members winning nine trophies.
Richard Hemingway retained his title as County Champion, ultimately earning five separate trophies – the Association Cup (Overall Confined Championship), the 50Metre Challenge Trophy, the Miniature Rifle Cup (A-Class Champion), the Michelin Cup (best 100yard scores in A-Class) and the Greatrex Cup (top NSRA County Medal holder).
Deb Truman became Staffordshire Ladies Champion. Graham Delaney won D-Class, with Lee Featherstone runner up. Paul Watkiss narrowly missed out on a medal, placing fourth in C-Class.
