On the 21st March, eight cadets were selected to take part in a range day at Ash Ranges to practice our marksmanship skills for the upcoming competition the following month. This included zeroing our rifles to make the sights personalised to us. We practiced our prone, sitting, and kneeling position. This time we used a gallery range, so we took turns manually putting the targets up and down if hit – which was a fun extra workout. We undertook a practice shoot of what we’d be up against on competition day. We would run 100m, get in position, load the magazine, make ready, and take a shot, all in 35 seconds. Which we all gave it our best shot (pun intended). Then we did that twice again. These scores were then used to make our final team of four.
Our 2025/26 shooting team is: Sergeant Jenkins (Team Captain), Corporal Curror, Lance Corporal Callard and Lance Corporal Carr.
On the 18th of April we competed in the HQ LONDIST CADSAAM 26 competition against six other teams from London. The competition included two shoots. The first, we ran from 400m to 100m, 100m at a time and shot 10 rounds in different positions. Which we thankfully had a lot of practice in, so we were all able to hit most of the targets, even as far as 300m! This won us a lot of points! Then we had an amazing lunch because Captain Quick treated us to Domino’s! After we had all devoured our pizza it was time for our next shoot. We did prone, sitting, kneeling, and standing in the trench, from 300m and 200m at a figure 11 target and 100m at a figure 12 target. This was our best shoot and our team won!
Overall, we came second place and went home with two medals each and a trophy for the team, which we are all so proud of. This was such a great result, especially since it’s been over 10 years since the army section took part in a shooting competition. It was such a great opportunity and I hope we can do even better next year!
Written by: Sergeant Jenkins
