The 3 Pos­i­tions, 2^nd VIII and 3^rd VIII varsity matches were all held on Sat­urday 9^th March, the same day as what would be a fant­astic CURA din­ner. Things were due to kick of around 11am, how­ever Oxford delay’s kicked the sched­ule back by two and a half hours. Cam­bridge, who were well pre­pared and organ­ised, took this oppor­tun­ity to relax and watch Oxford scramble to get ready.

Things kicked off with the 3 Pos­i­tions varsity, known as the Ler­mann. It con­sisted of 4 man teams shoot­ing one card in the prone, kneel­ing and stand­ing pos­i­tions. The score remained tight through­out the match, with a 2 point lead to Cam­bridge after the prone cards, and 5 point lead to Oxford after kneel­ing. In the final detail the Cam­bridge shoot­ers held their nerve. Between them, David Firth, Nick Hall, Johnny Waite and Ed Kim put down a win­ning score of 927 to beat Oxford’s 921, includ­ing an impress­ive score by Waite of 244.

Whilst the Ler­mann was com­ing to a close, the 2^nd VIII match, known as the Kens­ing­ton, had already begun. All of the Cam­bridge 2^nd team had been with reach of the closely con­tested 1^st team places and were look­ing to prove them­selves under the pres­sure. The huge depth of CUSBC was demon­strated by not one single per­son drop­ping below 187, a fant­astic achieve­ment. Oxford had some strong shoot­ers but were let down by their tail end, show­ing a much greater vari­ation in scores across their team of eight. The final score was 1503 (Cam­bridge) vs. 1482 (Cam­bridge). This was not far off this year’s Heslop score, and bodes well for CUSBC repla­cing those 1^st team shoot­ers who will be leav­ing this year. Mat­ilda McAleenan top scored for Cam­bridge with 191.

This year also saw a 3^rd VIII match, which saw the newly donated ‘Ex-Captains’ Chal­lenge Cup’ being won for first time. Unfor­tu­nately Oxford were let down by one of their team, who did not turn up. A con­fid­ent Cam­bridge kindly agreed to take an aver­age across the team to work around this, although this is argu­ably a dis­ad­vant­age to the Light Blues. This match was an easy vic­tory for Cam­bridge, who pro­duced a score 1433, beat­ing Oxford by 130 points. Johnny Waite showed his 1^st team exper­i­ence, and why he already has a CUSBC half blue, by put­ting down the top score of 193. Fol­low­ing closely behind was Krit Sitath­ani with a score of 190. The first ever engrav­ing on the Ex-Captain’s Chal­lenge Cup will be ‘2013 Cambridge’.

After a long day, where 38 shoot­ers ploughed through 86 cards between them, Cam­bridge came away with 3 more vic­tor­ies to add to suc­cesses in the Heslop (1^st VIII) and Bentata (Women’s IV) just a few weeks ago. This means Cam­bridge yet again achieved the clean sweep, tak­ing home all the sil­ver­ware. Cel­eb­ra­tion took place through­out the night as Oxbridge shoot­ers, past and present came together for a highly com­men­ded CURA din­ner. As the sea­son comes to a close, CUSBC will be hop­ing to help Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Officer Train­ing Corps retain the Land Com­mand Small Bore Cham­pi­on­ship on Sat­urday 16^th March. After this, the focus will shift to Easter Bis­ley train­ing as the Full Bore sea­son begins and CURA looks to extend run of varsity success.

David Firth,

CUSBC Cap­tain 2012 – 2013

For the first time in a couple of years, Cam­bridge was able to attend the BUCS team finals, which were held last week­end on Sat­urday 23^rd Feb­ru­ary in Stave­ley near Shef­field. The final con­sisted of the 16 teams who had qual­i­fied via a round of postal card com­pet­i­tion. This used to be 2 cards each a months for five months, how­ever this year saw the intro­duc­tion of a con­tro­ver­sial one card only format. Our team man­aged to make the cut des­pite a dis­tinctly below aver­age per­form­ance, and we were look­ing to do ourselves justice on the day.

Things looked set to be against us from the start, with team mem­bers unable to attend or injured, and last minute rifle prob­lems, but we were not deterred. Upon arrival we learned of yet another unusual com­pet­i­tion format. Every­one would shoot just one card, with the top teams pro­gress­ing to the final (of the final), where scores would reset and every­one would shoot just one more card. 10 minutes includ­ing sight­ers meant this would be high-pressure shoot­ing, but some­thing we were con­fid­ent about hav­ing won varsity just last week­end. Some teams trav­elled for hours only to shoot for 10 minutes and go home. Cam­bridge went through to the final 8 in second place with 570 ex 600, 2 points behind Southamp­ton, but once again beat­ing Oxford. Olly Col­las showed fant­astic form with a huge 98 ex 100.

In the final round, see­ing as the scores were bizar­rely reset, any one of the 8 teams was in with a chance of the medals. This time Cam­bridge put down an improved score of 573 ex 600, with solid scores across the board: Olly Col­las (97), Ewan John­stone (97), David Firth (96), Nick Hall (95), Anna Stans­bury (94) and Luke Dav­ison (94). This was enough to leave us tied with Southamp­ton for gold. As the team began pre­par­ing for an excit­ing tie shoot, the Cap­tains were called over to dis­cuss the format. Southamp­ton chal­lenged one of their scores and received an extra point, mean­ing the tie shoot was off and Cam­bridge took second place. This was dis­ap­point­ing but still a fant­astic res­ult given the dif­fi­culties and the one card sys­tem, and the icing on the cake was that we had beaten Oxford yet again, who took bronze with 571 ex 600. The club will now focus on 2^nd & 3^rd VIII and 3 Pos­i­tions varsity which will be held in Cam­bridge on Sat­urday 9^th March.

David Firth

CUSBC Cap­tain 2012 – 2013

The Small Bore Rifle Varsity match was held on Sat­urday 16^th Feb­ru­ary, at the National Shoot­ing Centre in Bis­ley. An early start was required to give time for 2 hour jour­ney, and some relax­a­tion and pre­par­a­tion time at the other end. Some­what to our sur­prise, we found Oxford on the range prac­tising as the clock approached (and past) the agreed start time. It was clear they were try­ing to get every advant­age they could in order to over­come the 5 years con­sec­ut­ive vic­tor­ies Cam­bridge have man­aged since the draw of 2007.

This year’s varsity saw 3 Cam­bridge shoot­ers mak­ing their 1^st VIII debut, join­ing 5 exper­i­enced shots with 13 pre­vi­ous 1^st team caps between them. The match was a close affair from the very begin­ning.. With just two shoot­ers from each first team left to shoot, there was just 1 point in it. Due to a policy of no talk of scores, it was some­thing few knew as I watched my last two shoot­ers put in solid per­form­ances. Due to an Oxford rifle mal­func­tion, and some leni­ency on my behalf, the last Oxford shot had to com­plete their cards on a one-man detail once their rifle had been fixed. Her shots were to decide the match, and as things even­tu­ally unfol­ded, it was the very last bul­let fired that determ­ined the winner…

It was ini­tially believed that Cam­bridge had won by 2 points, but before it could be announced it was elu­cid­ated that Oxford had provided a gauge (used to determ­ine the pre­cise score on a tar­get) for the wrong dis­tance. This meant the Oxford cap­tain and I had to regauge every single card again to see if the scores changed — a very tense time for every­one! Oxford gained 3 points and Cam­bridge gained 2, mean­ing a one point vic­tory to Cam­bridge 1^st VIII. The final score was 1515 (Cam) 1514 (Ox) out of a pos­sible 1600. James Diviney put down the highest score of the match with an impress­ive 194, with David Firth and Liz­zie Pot­ter achiev­ing an impress­ive score of 192, matched only by Oxford’s top scorer.

The Women’s 1^st IV match was shot sim­ul­tan­eously, and was an extremely dom­in­ant vic­tory for Cam­bridge. The four Cam­bridge shoot­ers were mak­ing their varsity debuts for Cam­bridge, with Liz­zie Pot­ter shoot­ing the 1^st VIII con­cur­rently. Her score of 192 made her the highest scor­ing woman. The final score was 756 (Cam) 690 (Ox), mean­ing a resound­ing 66 point victory.

Hav­ing met the cri­teria (a score of 190 in a first team varsity), half blues were awar­ded to Luke Dav­ison, David Firth, Liz­zie Pot­ter and Anna Stans­bury, and reawar­ded to Olly Col­las and James Diviney.

Our shoot­ers will now be mov­ing their focus towards BUCS team finals on Sat­urday 23^rd Feb­ru­ary, fol­lowed by 3 Pos­i­tions, 2^nd VIII and 3^rd VIII varsity on Sat­urday 9^th March. After so many fant­astic shots nar­rowly miss­ing out on a first team place, I am con­fid­ent that Cam­bridge has the depth and tal­ent to achieve yet another clean sweep of victories.

David Firth

CUSBC Cap­tain 2012 – 13

Thanks to some of our cur­rent mem­bers, CURA and CUSBC have new web­sites! They are now much more usable to not-so tech-savy people so expect more updates. New fea­tures will be added as time goes on but bear with us!