Lae shooters prepare for Arafura Games

 RIGGO NANGAN

MEMBERS of the Lae Pistol Club are gearing up to shoot their way into the Arafura Games in Darwin, Australia in May.

While most of the sporting codes on recess, the shooters continued to roll into the festive season.

Most club members had gone for holidays, while only a few kept the venue at Babbler Street along Butibam Road, alive with the ‘bangs’ on Boxing Day Sunday and last Sunday.  

“Lae had not missed a spot in representing Papua New Guinea abroad in recent times,” said the club president Ian Chow.

Chow said club had produced some of Papua New Guinea’s top shooters during its four decades of existence. Many of the shooters, he said, had now either gone overseas, other parts of the country or had passed on.

Lae had some of its top shooters in the PNG team that took part in the Australasian championships in Bangkok, Thailand in 2007. 

The Lae shooters were the Chow brothers Ian and Alex, Sike Minziong and John Bancock.

In 2009, a batch of Lae shooters which included the Chow brothers, John Russo and Michael Naleng, made up the PNG team that took part in the Australasian championship in the Philippines.

Lae also played hosts to the national championship last October which saw 70 best shooters from Lae, Goroka, Rabaul and Port Moresby taking part.

It was there that 12 shooters were selected to represent PNG in Jahor, Malaysia, in the same month.

Chow was adamant that Lae would make up the national team to the 2011 Arafura Games and also the world championships in Greece in October where over 1,500 shooters from 40 countries around the world would be competing.  

Chow added that Lae Pistol Club currently has over 200 members, more than half of which are nationals. 

Some of these, he said, are police officers, both men and women, who joined to upgrade their skills and techniques in firearms handling.

He said the club enhanced normal handling skills and techniques as well as Olympic shooting. 

Range officer Sike Minziong is looking for accuracy and timing when assessing the shooters.