Stephanie McNair New Zealand's Open Smallbore Champion

Stephanie McNair - one of the country's best shots.

Dannevirke's Stephanie McNair has won the prestigious Overall Champion title in the New Zealand National Indoor Smallbore Championships competing at the Palmerston North range Sunday, August 2.

She took the title with a score of 400.30 ahead of 168 other competitors in a shoot held in a number of centres scattered around New Zealand on August 2. This included 33 shooters in the Masters Grade – the highest classification - and included NZ Olympian Ryan Taylor who won his grade with a score of 400.29 but was 0.01 behind Stephanie who shoots in A Grade.

The McNair family all competed very successfully as well, her mum Ruth coming third in the A Grade and dad Robbie 7th in the A Grade.

Stephanie has had a dozen experiences shooting at Manawatu (which is a very nice range according to dad Robbie) including the Manawatu Open last year and finds the challenge of adapting to the 25-yard range from the 20-yard range at Dannevirke not too difficult.

In fact, allowed a 10-shot practice on Sunday she hit the inner bull with each of her first four shots and stopped saying that was enough then went on to do the same on each of her four 10-shot cards.

This was the first time in competition Stephanie had shot the perfect score on an indoor range. Robbie says she is breaking all his early records and he is delighted.

Stephanie is using Robbie's his old rifle which Robbie had used for 20 years and apart from a new barrel it is the same. Both Stephanie and Robbie are left-handed so the gun must be special.

An experienced club member predicted Stephanie's success saying, "Watch Stephanie go with this rifle", and so it has transpired.

Back in March Stephanie hit the big time in the NZ Outdoor National Championships for Smallbore Rifle Shooting. This was held at Tokoroa Shooting Sports Complex.

It was an incredible week for Stephanie. Having only shot outdoors over 50 metres a few times at the Norsewood Range, she qualified for the NZ Open Junior Drew Team, NZ Junior Women's Drew Team, and the NZ vs Australia Junior Team and then went on to qualify for the North Island and New Zealand Open Slazenger team, (the latter along with mum Ruth).

Proving her worth Stephanie shot a personal best of 623.0(595) to top score in the NZ Open Slazenger Team competition and in the process she broke the NZ records for 50m Prone shooting for both Junior and Women.

Ahead for Stephanie in September are the New Zealand Secondary School's Championships and the North Island Championships. At nearly 17 years of age she has an amazing career ahead of her.