Take a look around this site to see what we do, and then sign up here for a trial shoot if you want to have a go.

We’re not picky about who we take, so long as your of sane mind and willing to make an effort. We run our trial shoots so you can see if you want to be one of us, not so we can be picky about you.

Did you find us at the bun fight?

If you found us at the bun fight, then you should receive an email within 24 hours giving you further information on how to sign up. If you missed us, please enter your university username here to receive the info:

Hope to see lots of you soon.

I am very pleased to be able to announce the results of the BUCS Long Range event at Appleton Rifle Club, in Warrington, Cheshire.

The competition consists of every competitor shooting two cards at 50 metres, and two cards at 100 yards, on an outdoor range. This means not only are the teams under the pressure of the competition, but they also have to battle against the elements. Despite the wind and rain for the majority of the day, in true Southampton style all team members shone through.

With several competitions running concurrently, there were a large number of medals to be awarded.
The teams consisted of the following competitors:

Jen Barber
Tim Keen
Martyn Hiscox
Rich Ward
Frances Wardlaw
Katie Sullivan
Sam Huish
Allan Skellett
Brendan McFall
Ryan Graham
Lawrence Eagling
Jake Goldsmith
Matt Warner
Dave Rowell
Rob Rendell
Ben Pedley
Mike Ladhams

In the main team event, consisting of eight firers, the A team upheld their status as National Champions, with a lead of 82 points ahead of rivals Aberdeen.
The team consisted of:

Tim Keen
Jen Barber
Rich Ward
Frances Wardlaw
Sam Huish
Allan Skellett
Dave Rowell
Rob Rendell

In a similar fashion, the B team reclaimed 3rd place, only 30 points short of second.
Taking the bronze medals were:

Martyn Hiscox
Katie Sullivan
Brendan McFall
Ryan Graham
Ben Pedley
Lawrence Eagling
Matt Warner
Mike Ladhams

Due to some very ‘Tactical’ team selection for the Quads 100yrds competition, all medals for this discipline were claimed by Southampton, with the A, B and C Quartets taking Bronze, Silver and Gold Medals respectively.

Quads as follows:

C: Martyn Hiscox, Katie Sullivan, Rob Rendell, Ryan Graham
B: Frances Wardlaw, Brendan McFall, Tim Keen, Jen Barber
A: Rich Ward, Sam Huish, Allan Skellett, Dave Rowell

In a moment of Déjà vu, the Southampton Ladies Triad, Jen Barber, Frances Wardlaw and Katie Sullivan took the gold medals for the second year running.

In the pairs competition Sam Huish and Dave Rowell were runners up.

The individual event saw Tim Keen and Rich Ward claiming the Silver and Bronze medals, ahead of several Great Britain competitors.

Similarly, Jen Barber came third in the Ladies individual, bringing the total number of medals won by Southampton to an outstanding 36! (Yes, Thirty-Six)

Following the main event, the British Universities Home Countries Match took place, which is where ten competitors from all English Universities are selected to take part in this International Match. In similar style to previous years, there was a large Southampton contingent in this with Tim Keen, Rich Ward, Sam Huish, Dave Rowell and Mike Ladhams all representing England. Unfortunately, England lost narrowly to Scotland.

This is a fantastic result for all of the teams, and all of you should be very proud to have made this happen. Following the victories of the A and B teams at the Indoor Championship earlier this season, to maintain our high standards and win all of the team events in BUCS has been no mean feat, and I would like to thank you all for putting so much effort into your training. I’m immensely proud of all of you, and as my time as Captain draws to a close I would like to encourage all of you to take advantage of everything our Rifle Club has to offer; you will never find such an opportunity to be part of something this awesome anywhere else. As BUCS shooting intends to expand into more disciplines, I would hope that SURC will remain at the forefront of it, after all, that’s how we roll.

Well done and thank you to all of you who made this weekend possible both competitors, our graduate support and the Athletics Union.

Yours,

Sam Huish

Captain SURC

Now I’ve finally calmed down from all excitement that was Isle of Man, I’m very please to be able to announce the results.

Both the Saturday and Sunday proved to be challenging for everyone, but despite that, everyone held their own given the conditions.

In the 60 shot Prone competition on Saturday, Charlie Asquith won B class with a score of 586 ex. 600, with Ryan Graham close behind in 5th with a score of 581.
In the 40 shot Prone, run concurrently with the 60 shot match, Charlie took the gold again, with 391 ex. 400, Ryan Graham was again close on his heels with a score of 388 ex. 400 placing him 3rd.

On the Sunday Mark Girling won the overall 60 shot match competition with a score of 595 ex. 600, three points ahead of the next best competitor. Subsequently Mark also won the Sunday 40 shot match overall, X class 60 shot match, and the X class 40 shot match.
Allan Skellet won the gold medal in B class for the 60 shot match with a score of 585 ex. 600, meaning both he and Mark found themselves shooting in the Olympic style final.

The final was very tense, seeing the some of the countries best shots competing shoulder to shoulder. Once again, Southampton triumphed and Mark Girling held his position in first place with a score of 104.1 ex. 109. Allan Skellett shot an impressive 101.2, pulling himself up a place.

Not only was the shooting on the trip successful, but it also proved to be a great chance for the banter to get in flow, and get to know people within the club, and the wider shooting community. I would encourage you all to come to the NSRA Meeting (Smallbore Week) in August, as an opportunity to further you’re shooting abilities.

And of course, many thanks to Corinna for organising another successful Isle of Man trip.

Rifley Love,

Sam Huish
Captain SURC

Individual Averages were:

M Girling: 98.43
C Asquith: 98.29
R Ward: 97.79
K Sullivan: 97.25
A Skellett: 95.40

Congratulations to the team.

Following a weekend of intense shooting, and much banter, I am very proud to announce the results of the BUCS short range team and individual championships.

On the Saturday two Southampton University Teams competed for the ‘Aberdeen Cup’ at Stavely Rifle Club in Derbyshire.
The Teams were as follows:

A Team:
Sam Huish
Allan Skellett
Jen Barber
Rich Ward
Frances Wardlaw
Katie Sullivan

B Team:
Brendan McFall
Rob Rendell
Dave Rowell
Ryan Graham
Mike Ladhams

In the first round the A team knocked out Aberdeen University (by one point), with the B team beating London A.
The second round saw the A team beating Newcastle A, and the B team taking another win against Durham A.

This meant that for the time in the competitions history there was to be a Southampton A vs Southampton B final, and despite some excellent performances from the B team (including Dave Rowell’s first Ton), the A team was victorious!

The Sunday saw the individual, ladies and freshers competitions.

Michael Ladhams took the gold in the freshers competition.

President Jen Barber secured the first place in the Ladies event, with Frances Wardlaw two points behind in fourth place.

I’d like to thank everyone for giving their time and commitment for this competition, and I’m extremely proud of everything you have all achieved this weekend.

Much Rifley Love,

Sam Huish

A very proud Captain SURC

PS: Also see this report on the BUCS website: http://www.bucs.org.uk/page.asp?section=15832&sectionTitle=Championships+2011

The pair hope to bring some youth (well perhaps not in Mark’s case) and fresh ideas to Hampshire shooting.

With the campsite set up and the club’s gazebo providing an HQ for the week’s activities, we set about with the shooting. The pre-grand shoots provided a good warmup and a chance to dust off the cobwebs, especially in the area of wind judgement for those at their first meeting. We did however achieve some good results in these early shoots – Brendan was lucky enough to get an early morning (and thus low wind) detail in the 1000x Lovell competition and used this to his advantage, shooting a 47.5 and coming 72^nd on the prizelist, breaking his Tyro on the second day. While Brendan was worrying if he had peaked too early, the others were putting in good results in the early competitions of the grand aggregate. Sam shot a 73.9 in the 500x Daily Telegraph, coming 83^rd – one place above the “Last O in”. Two days in, two tyros broken!

From Saturday until the following Thursday, the competitions of the grand aggregate are shot. Highlights of the week included Charlie’s 50.6 in the 600x Alexandra, giving him 63^rd place. Tim also got a 50.4 in the 900x Duke of Cambridge, coming 71^st. While quite a few members of the club were “Incorporated” by the 1000x Corporation, we didn’t let this hold us back and some good results were produced later in the week – Charlie and Tim both made the second stages of HM Queen’s Prize and St George’s, respectively, while Charlie put in an awesome display in the inter-counties match, dropping just a single point over four distances, and claiming a silver medal for Northants and Leicestershire in the long range portion of the event. Ellie and Sam also distinguished themselves in the 600x Prince of Wales competition, coming 111^th and 113^th respectively, both with a score of 73.9 out of 75 – Sam was only beaten on countback.

Numerous aggregate prizes were also entered by club members – Sam made it onto several armed forces prizelists thanks to his membership of SUAS, while Ellie showed that entering all the optional aggregates can pay off by collecting more than a few bars of her own. All three tyros also made the prizelist for the young rifleman’s aggregate. Charlie managed to A-class himself again by coming 165^th in the Grand Aggregate, with Tim in 260^th – just 3 points separated him from the A-class cutoff of 200^th place.

After the grand came the main event – BUCS fullbore, made up of two separate competitions. The Musketeers is shot at 300, 500 and 600 yards, and consists of 1 sighter and 10 to count, with outside coaches allowed. The team was Ellie (captain), Tim, Sam and Nick, coached by Dave Rose with Brendan acting as reserve. Nick was also shooting the Kopalore for his national team, Guernsey, so his scores counted concurrently. Nick put in two HPS scores (50.9, 50.6) and Tim one (50.5), as the team finished second behind Exeter with a score of 583.60 out of 600. With time to spare, Brendan was given the chance to shoot for practice as well, and (perhaps just to put off the other members of the team) got his first ever HPS of 50.4 at 500 yards. It was an excellent effort all round by the team, and our best result in recent years at the Musketeers.

The next day, however, we had to tackle the 900 and 1000 yard Universities Long Range. The wind proved much more tricky out here and we saw more than one shot blown into the Magpie ring for a 3 out of a possible 5. We were only four points off the lead after 900 yards but a fairly disastrous 1000 yard shoot saw us drop a few points too many, finishing 6^th with 370.30 /400, still a respectable score.

In the overall BUCS classification, Southampton were 5^th with a total of 953 and 90 V bulls – only four points off the medals. This is a good result and with the calibre (to pardon the pun) of talent in some of our younger shooters we should be able to better this result in future years. Southampton’s name was also being circulated throughout the fullbore community, due both to the team’s stylish choice of club polo on our nightly visits to the Surrey RA for beverages, and also thanks to our contacts within the school and cadet shooting community. We are hopeful that we have attracted some promising young talent to the university, where they can continue shooting as members of SURC. Next year we also plan to devote more time and resources to fullbore training, and have requested support from the athletic union in our development plan specifically for this purpose. After what was an awesome week, both on and off the ranges, it seems SURC’s quest to conquer both fullbore and smallbore is definitely on the right track!

Brendan “Jesus Christ, it’s a Vulcan!” McFall.

After a few nerve calming beverages the team soon settled down to bed in our Warrington B+B. Saturday morning was early start for all competitors with shooting20 shots to count at 50 meters and 100 yards.

Late afternoon after all the shooting had finished the results were announced. In the team of eight our A Team came first only dropping 281 points, beating our main competition Aberdeen by 46 points, and our B Team came third, only dropping 426 and beating every other universities’ A Teams which is a very impressive achievement. Other impressive achievements included gold in the team of four, pairs, silver in the ladies triad. Individuals within the team also managed to take home some silver with Rich Ward coming 3rd, only dropping 23 points out of a possible 800 and James Paterson taking gold after only dropping an impressive 19 points.

In the Home Countries event of eight James, Tim, Rich, Sam and Katie were selected to shoot for England, meaning half of the team were from Southampton Uni and leading to a victory over Wales and Scotland.

Having our A team come first and our B team third demonstrates the depth and marksmanship ability that Southampton university rifle club has and will ensure that the club will be strong contenders to be champions in the coming years.

Friday saw a good practise session with the wind largely behaving itself. Unfortunately this weather did not extend to the higher altitudes, and the planned pistol shooting was cancelled in favour of the pub due to the knock on effect and other pistol competitions being postponed. The pub as it turned out was not wholly uneventful… Allan Skellett ordered and saw away a mission impossible… a burger containing three ½ pound burgers (one and a half pounds of meat) plus cheese, bacon, and chips on the side. It was an achievement which unanimously won him spoon of the trip – even against Lawrence leaving his bolt in Southampton…

Friday also allowed James Paterson and Mark “Shim” Szymankiewicz to compete in the air rifle event, coming a respectable 6th and 7th respectively

Saturday comprised the first of two sixty shot prone competitions and the 3 position (3P events). The wind once again wasn’t too bad, enabling Michelle Smith, a friend of the club, to set a new British 3P ladies record (subject to confirmation). The men’s 3P final saw James Paterson to defend his title admirably to win silver, losing out to former Southampton student, Duncan Farmer. Shim narrowly missing out on Bronze in fourth place and Mark Girling coming 7th, despite leading the field in both Prone and Kneeling disciplines all the way through the competition.

Saturday night came the real competition – LaserBlast! AUP Allan “Bermuda” Steynor joined the club for a few games as a wind-down. Embarrassingly in one game his accuracy (% of hits from shots fired) was higher than that of any other shooter. His team still lost though… twice.

Sundays Prone competition was the qualification competition for both the mens and ladies prone finals. 5 Southampton, or former Southampton students, made the top 20 in the prone event, with Katie “Cap’n” Sullivan, Rich Ward and Mark Girling all making the prone final. Michelle Smith was the run-away winner in the ladies final with a 106.1 – a score never before seen or heard of by any ISSF Judge present.

Awards were also given out for other competitions, scores for which were formed from the main Saturday and Sunday competitions. Our medal tally is yet to be finalised due to the late award of silver and bronze medals, but is expected to be over a dozen. A full list of results can be found at http://www.isleofmanshooting.com/easter/results2010.shtml

A few special mentions must also go to Ryan, Sam, Sherman, Jen and Sarah for outstanding performances.

A massive thank you to all who came along, for the banter, the scores, for signing my “cards”, and for the bottle of port!

The Club’s congratulations go to Mike Bagot and Michelle Smith of Havant Rifle Club who became engaged on the trip.

TEAM OF THE

YEAR!!!!!

At the Athletic Union Ball, 2009, the rifle club was awarded the trophy for Team of the Year!!

This recognises the contribution the rifle club has made to raising the profile of sport and contributing to the sporting success of Southampton University!

In addition:

Club colours went to Corinna and Rich.

Half Colours to Simon and Jen.

Full colours to Sam and Tim

Plus the Outstanding Achievement award went to James.
Very very well done to everybody