Echuca Pistol Club is set to make its debut to the competitive stage as it hosts a state selection match at the weekend. Secretary Mark Oliver says the club has been working hard to rebuild and improve the facilities after flood damage to the clubrooms. Photos: EPC
A new era is beginning for Echuca Pistol Club this weekend as it hosts its first major event in several years in a revamped and repaired facility.
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The club will be hosting a state selection match, the Echuca Pistol Club Riverboat Express, on Saturday, November 16, and Sunday, November 17.
The event features separate shoots on both days, with competitors able to compete in a single event or both, with each day featuring eight stages of shooting.
The club, situated off Looker Rd, east of Echuca, has benefited in recent years from grants from all three levels of government, totalling about $500,000.
“We’ve done a lot of upgrades, we’ve basically taken the facility from four ranges to nine,” club secretary Mark Oliver said.
“We got flooded, our clubhouse got destroyed, all our infrastructure got destroyed and we got grants for that, so we’ve had to rebuild everything and this is basically our big launch.
“The clubs never, for a number of years, really held competitions, and we’ve done all these upgrades and coming back from the floods and basically we’re launching the club back on to the competition circuit.”
The shoot is a mandatory event for those seeking selection into the Victorian state team, but will also feature competitors from other states, with several hundred participants expected.
Echuca Pistol Club’s upgraded ranges and facilities will host three to four major events per year.
The newly upgraded club facility has proved attractive to the governing body and Echuca is set to host three or four state level events per year.
“Echuca has some different facilities that other clubs don’t have in that we’ve got earth berms which provides us lot more opportunity to give variation to competitors,” Oliver said.
“It’s a new range coming on board that they’ve not participated at so it’s adding an extra piece of infrastructure to that competition set.”
Earth berms are banks that enclose the pistol range, ensuring shots remain within the confines of the range, their presence allowing the club to provide a more varied target set.
Oliver also credited Echuca’s attractiveness as a tourist destination putting the location ahead of many other pistol clubs in the state.
On the back of its competitive launch, the club will be instituting come-and-try events in the future, allowing prospective members to learn the sport under one-on-one instruction from an experienced shooter.
• The Echuca Pistol Club Riverboat Express state selection match will take place this weekend at Echuca Pistol Club.
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