DURC Captain breaks all records

This year's DURC captain, Steven Watterson, has set an
extraordainarily high standard for whomever fills his shoes
next year. Having arrived in TCD from Edinburgh only two
years ago, Steven was immediately recruited by the club due
to his long history in the sport of target shooting and his
involvement in the running of the Edinburgh rifle club.
Steven immediately showed his potential when shooting in the
DURC Air Rifle Open only a month later, putting in a score of
562, a full 45 points ahead of the next highest DURC score,
and putting himself in fifth place in the competition, though 
he couldn't shoot in the finals on this occasion. 

Back in TCD, Steven won the air rifle club championship
and the 25yd club championship back to back and with large
margins to boot. Shortly afterwards, he was elected Captain
for this academic year.

Steven focussed on training in the following months, and
didn't compete again until the 50m season, where he showed
his proficency in smallbore shooting by taking fifth place in
the Leinster Open, and first place in the DURC Open, beating
off Olympian Alan Lewis and National Champion Ray Reilly to
do so. 

Steven is a Manx native, and so he returned to the Isle of
Man during the summer to compete in the Island Games, held
between various smaller islands like Jersey, the Faroes,
Iceland, Malta and the Isle of Man. Here, he took third place
in the Air Rifle event (and was on the team that came in
fourth), scoring a perfect 100/100 while doing so - the first
time a DURC shooter has done so in competition. Not content
with this, he went on to take second place in the 50m "3P"
(three position) match, as well as being on the team that
took the silver medal in the team 3P event. 3P is notorious
for being the single most demanding discipline in target
shooting, taking nearly four hours to shoot a match and
demanding the highest level of skill of any of the olympic
disciplines.

Following this victory, Steven found himself in contention
for a place in the Commonwealth games on the GB team, a place
he has now managed to secure - the first time that a DURC
shooter has done so. 

In this year's air rifle season, Steven has excelled - taking
bronze in the Wiklinstown Open in October, and again in the
UCD Open, fourth in the FSC Open in November, and in the
National Open he held the lead until the last few shots, when
he fell back to third place. As he is a Manx naive, Steven
cannot compete for the National Championship, or we would now
be happily pointing out that the Rifle Club has National
Champions in three of the four events for which a
championship is held!

During the Easter break, Steven returned to the Isle of Man
for the Easter Shoot, a small international shoot held
annually. Shooting this year representing DURC, Steven took
third place in the Air Rifle competition overall and third in
class A, sixth in the 3P competition and in the 50m prone
match he took home two first place team awards, one third
place team award and put in two perfect 100/100 scores as
well. 

The AGM for the rifle club is coming up on Wednesday April
26th - whomever gets the job of Captain for next year is
going to have an incredibly high standard to live up to!


Attached Photos: 
Steven_1.jpg
Steven Watterson

Steven_2.jpg
Steven Watterson in the National Open Finals

Steven_3.jpg
Steven Watterson, Nicola Murphy, Rhona Barry and Terry
McAuley at the DURC Air Rifle Open 2001