Teen's hot shooting stuns club

Competing for gold at a future Olympic Games is not a far-fetched goal in the mind of a Rotorua 13-year-old who has wowed her club with a near-perfect smallbore shooting score.

Western Heights High School Year 9 student Cheyanne McKenzie has only been smallbore shooting for the past year and a-half.

But this week she shot a near-perfect score at the Rotorua Indoor Shooting Club, getting 100.07 on a target card. The highest a shooter can score is 100.10.

"It was the last thing I was expecting. It's really hard to achieve a 100, let alone a 100.07.

"My friends didn't realise how good it was until they tried it themselves and found out how hard it is."

Cheyanne said she was drawn to shooting because it was a sport she had to do by herself.

"It's all up to me. It's my passion that keeps me going."

She beamed at her target card as she spoke.

"I went and got it laminated straight away because if it ripped I would have been heartbroken.

"My parents were stoked when they saw it. I thought my dad was going to have a heart attack."

She said going to the Olympics for shooting was something she would like to aim for. "If I was in the Olympics and shot that, it would have been a gold ... scores like that don't happen often but if I can do it once, I can do it again," she said.

Her coach and the club's secretary Ivor Brettell said he would back Cheyanne "all the way" if she decided to pursue shooting further.