Three young members of a local pistol shooting club have qualified to represent WA on the national stage, with one eyeing a professional career that she hopes will take her to the Olympics.
West Coolup-based Murray Districts Pistol Club are celebrating after a trio of its junior shooters were selected to the WA team for the International Shooting Sport Federation National Championships in Brisbane from May 15-19.
Junior members Harper Floyd, 14, Angus Caruso, 16 and Amy Moody, 17, have all qualified to compete at the national event.
Amy, from Pinjarra, who is also a junior committee chairperson at the club, said she was looking forward to her second national competition after competing for the first time last year.
There the shooter finished as the fifth-ranked junior woman in the 10m air pistol competition and hopes to improve on her position after attending a national coaching camp and putting in extra training hours.
Amy said she was hopeful she might be able to take out a title after working hard on her 25m sport pistol shooting.
“I definitely have improved my scores a lot since last year,” she said.
Amy took up the sport after her grandmother became a keen shooter and she wanted to check out the action for herself.
“I’d seen her pistols before and I’d seen her shooting,” she said. “And I’d been to the club to watch her before, and I just wanted to try it and I fell in love.”
The junior said she enjoys the strong community spirit among the club, where she trains twice a week and twice a fortnight with the other juniors going to May’s national competition.
“When people ask what’s your sport and you say pistol shooting, they get taken aback,” she said.
“They’ve never heard of it before.
“I’m aiming for the Olympics one day.
“I want to go as far as I can. I want to travel as well, I want to see different clubs around the world, see how they run.”