We congratulate the Newington Rifle team for becoming GPS Champions.  Enjoy the extract of the of the daily competition reports written by Rob Tredinnick (ON 1982) – Director of Rifle Shooting

Day One

The first day of GPS competition has concluded with the GPS Firsts Teams from each school competing in 2 events.

Event 1 is the Rawson Cup which is conducted over two stages at 500m and 600m. Newington finished first after winning both stages. At 500m we only dropped one point from our eight shooters out of a possible 280. This cup was first competed in 1908 with Newington being victorious. The last time we won the Rawson Cup was in 1935.

Event 2 is the NRA Shield again shot over 600m with the boys firing 10 scoring shots each. Newington finished first again. This shield was first shot in 1885 with Newington last recording victory in 1923. (I think Stan was in his first year of school counsellor).

The competition concludes tomorrow with the GPS Seconds competing over 500&300m and the Firsts at 300m and Snap.

The boys are understandably very pleased with their efforts and are looking forward to Day 2 of competition.

Day Two

The second day began with our GPS Seconds competing for their Premiership shooting over 500m then at 300m. They continued the great form set the previous day by our firsts. Newington where dominate in the event winning the competition by 10 points. The last time NC won the seconds competition was in 1932.

It was now up to the Firsts to put aside the results from yesterday and refocus on their two stages. The last trophy for the GPS competition is the Buchanan Shield which contains two stages. One is a shot at 300m the other is a snap shoot at 300m. After stage 1 NC was tied for first place with SBHS. The final result in the Buchanan Shield came down to the last shooters of the day with Newington finishing just three points ahead of SBHS. The last time NC won the Buchanan Shield was in 1918.

This meant that Newington was not only GPS Premiers but also GPS Champions. The last time Newington won the Premiership was in 1935. This year is the first time ever that Newington has won all three stages to become GPS Champions.

Newington has four boys selected in the Combined GPS team which will compete in an invitational shoot this Sunday at Hornsby Rifle Range. The boys are Nick Sims, Justin Malkki, Angus Mueller and Aydin Varol. Congratulations to Aydin who was also King Of The Range achieving the highest score of any of the schools at 196 out of a possible 200. This is now the second year in a row that Newington has achieved King of the Range.

Congratulations to the boys who all showed excellent spirit and results for their team. Congratulations also to the expert coaches in Greg Pike  and Andrew Sims (Nicks Father) who give an enormous amount of their time and expertise to the boys. Below is a list of the boys and teams.

Firsts: Sebastian Hodge, Edwin Hooper, Justin Malkki, Angus Mueller, Eric Mueller, Nick Sims, Thomas Su, Aydin Varol

Seconds: Tayne Andrew, Oscar Gresham, Nick Malakonakis, Thomas McDermott, Mark Naitoe, Joshua Roncolato, Hugo Slade, Peter Tredinnick

Reserves: Tom Graham, Tom Jordan, Andrew Giannakos, Sam Gresham