On 11th September, the SVS Shooting team headed off to the Pirbright Ranges in Guildford for the Regional Cadet Bisley Championships. This includes all cadet units – CCF, ACF, Air and Sea Cadets and Royal Marine Cadets across Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Berkshire and the Isle of Wight.

WO11 Thomas Arthur (Upper Sixth) reports, “The team consisted of Flight Sergeant Thomas Llewellyn (Upper Sixth), Cadet Callum Davis (Lower Sixth), Sergeant Daniel Wild (Lower Sixth) and myself, along with the butt-marking team of Cadet Thomas Dolan (Lower Sixth), Cadet Elyse Ratcliffe (Fourth Form) and Cadet Filipp Rivanenok (Fourth Form).

We arrived and initially started setting up our sights and weapons and started shooting at 100 meters – our first competitive shots in nearly two years. 100 metre zeroing followed by a 300-meter practice was all the preparation we had before the competition started.

The competition was held over three distances – 300 meters, 500 meters and 600 meters with individual and team prizes available. 

At each distance we fired twice – two sighters to make sure our aim was good, followed by seven scoring shots. With Doctor Bromley coaching us, we made some great shots with scores in the thirties.  

A VBull is the best you can achieve – it is a smaller target inside the bullseye and the team managed to score 13 of them across the two days – incredible shooting.

Finally, to end the event, we had the presentation. The Sutton Valence School CCF Shooting team came away with a total of two bronze, one silver and an amazing four gold medals, which constituted seven out of the available eight awards.

Some honourable mentions are Flight Sergeant Llewellyn’s third-best shot out of all CCF cadets present, Cadet Davis gaining the second-best shot and Thomas Arthur winning the best shot out of all cadets across all units.

The team won ‘Best CCF Team’ and the best team out of all the cadet units in the South of England. We will advance to join the top 40 shooting teams across the country in the national championships final at Bisley in October.

Our whole achievement would not be at all possible without the cadet training team and our very own staff, Flying Officer Westlake, Dr Bromley, Major Ale, Lieutenant Horley and Major Millbery.”

Well done to the whole team, what an incredible achievement.