Conor and Declan take aim in the Arizona desert

TWO Ardboe men travelled to Arizona at the end of November to compete in the World Field Target Championships.

Conor McFlynn, a PE teacher at Omagh CBS, and Declan Canavan were the only two shooters representing Field Target Ireland at the event, which was held in the desert neat Phoenix.

Over three days of competition in tricky conditions, they pair shot 150 targets – fifty per course – with Conor coming agonisingly close to overall victory, missing out on gold by just six points in the end, finishing fifth and earning a medal, while Declan, who has only been shooting for four years, came home in a share of 13th place after leading day one on the ‘white course’.

“I’m slightly disappointed because it was so close [to the podium] because I was joint second going into the last day of it,” explained Conor, who is a four-time European champion.

“I just missed too many shots on the final day – I missed eight shots and I hit a 42 [out of 50] when I’d have been needing to hit at least a 45]. The last day is usually my strongest day but the conditions were tough.”

Being from Ireland, heat haze isn’t something that Conor has to deal with and that, along with winds that were difficult to judge and the heat of the desert made the competition all the more challenging.

“The heat, the mirage and the wind made it particularly difficult,” he observed. “It was very windy and it was hard to judge. It was something I hadn’t encountered before.

“I shot well on the first day in the strongest wind, but on the last day it was a bit cooler and the wind was switchy and that led to a frustrating final day.”

Going into the event, Conor was hoping for a better result than fifth overall, but he admits that his preparation’s for the World Championships weren’t ideal.

“Being honest, maybe the preparation hadn’t been done,” he said. “I’m doing a lot of coaching at the school at the moment with the MacRory Cup and Rannafast and with the time of year it is, with the dark evenings and the dark mornings, you only really have the weekends to do anything.

“And then I’m taking MacRory Cup on a Saturday so you only have a Sunday and with the weather here, you don’t get too many of those either!

“But at the end of the day, the top score was 139 point and I had 133.”

While the conditions in Arizona and his preparations for the trip weren’t ideal, Conor is hopeful things will be more to his liking for the next World Championships, which will be held in Armagh.

Meanwhile, back in August, Conor was part of the Ireland team that finished second at the European Championships in Wales, while he came fifth in the individual competition.

“That was the first time Ireland put a team into a big competition and we came second,” he beamed. “I was fifth and another fella who shoots with me, Mark Blevins, from Armagh, came third.”

Conor, who won a shoot-off for fifth to seventh places in Arizona, would like to thank Omagh CBS staff for their generous support after they raised some funds for his trip to America.