Full hundred for Lazarus

David Lazarus was the happiest man at the Jamaica Skeet Club recently after shooting a perfect hundred in the Tony Kelly Skeet Classic. The shooters and small group of spectators who were present to witness the feat felt the excitement building up as Lazarus stepped up to the final station to take aim at a score that had not been seen at the club since 21 years ago.

Lazarus had to stay calm and focused as he prepared to hit the final target before high-fiving those around him. The last time a shooter posted a ‘full hundred’ score at the club, Lazarus was the man on the station with squad mate Tony Kelly – the man whom the event is named after.

After taking some time to savour the win, Lazarus said, “I am just floored that I can still actually put a hundred together in skeet. I just wanna thank the Skeet Club for putting on this tournament and for trying to bring skeet back. Anything we can do to promote the sport any more, let’s do it, let’s keep it going.

“Well, really and truly, skeet is a thing of repetition, you do the same thing over and over again and, thankfully, my only squad mate today, Mark Harris, kept a really, really good pace and made sure that the focus was always turned up to a hundred per cent.

“We just took our time, saw the birds, the birds were not easy today, they really weren’t. They were all over the place. So I am just thankful that I could keep my head down and just keep focused for the hour and a half that we were out there because it does take a lot, but sometimes lightning strikes and this happens.”

HOPES FOR THE CLUB

Lazarus looks forward to seeing skeet being more prominent at the club which now sees more sporting clays tournaments than skeet.

Camille Wright, who was the referee on both occasions when Lazarus shot the perfect hundred, said it was a good feeling to see Lazarus’ 100, and said she was just happy to be the one working both times. She said that this time she was nervous as she released the birds to be shot, as she knew that he was getting close to picking off one hundred birds.

Brett Thwaites took the runner-up spot in the A Class with a score of 97. The top junior on the day was David Wong, who shot 93, followed by Rajir DaCosta (81) and JJ Ralston (80).

The outstanding female shooter was Wendy McMaster, with 84 from D Class. The other female in the field was Yasmin Benjamin, who shot 69 from Hunters or Beginner’s Class.

The competition shot is four rounds of skeet (25 in each) totalling 100 birds while three skeet fields were used. Each field had eight stations.