Championships

Don Nicols Championship

The Don Nicols is the club’s best all-round shooter award. It sets every discipline on one fair scale, so a Target Rifle shooter and a Sporter shooter can be compared honestly. It's back for the 2026–27 season.

Why a handicap is needed

Disciplines aren’t scored the same way. A perfect F Open or F-TR day is 120; a perfect Target Rifle or Sporter day is 100. And a full score is much easier to reach in some disciplines than others — it is far easier to shoot 1000 in Sporter than 1200 in F Class. Comparing raw totals would reward the easier disciplines twice over. The Don Nicols fixes both problems: first it converts every score to a percentage of what was possible, then it applies a difficulty handicap measured from the club’s own results.

How the score is worked out

	Step	Worked example
1	Take each counting day total (Stage 1 + Stage 2).	F Open day = 117.08 (117 points)
2	Divide by the day maximum and ×100 to get a day percentage. Day maximum is 120 for F Open / F Standard / F-TR, and 100 for Target Rifle / Sporter.	117 ÷ 120 × 100 = 97.5%
3	Keep the best two days per distance across all five distances (300, 500, 600, 700, 800m) — up to ten counting days. This mirrors the club championship.	up to 10 day percentages
4	Add those day percentages together — the raw Don Nicols score, out of 1000 (ten days × 100%).	e.g. 975.0
5	Multiply by the discipline’s handicap factor (below).	975.0 × 0.945 = 921.4
6	Rank the field on the handicapped score. Centers break ties and never add to the score. Each shooter is entered under their strongest single discipline.	—

Don Nicols score = (sum of the best-two-per-distance day percentages, out of 1000) × discipline handicap factor

This season’s handicap factors

The factors are measured, not voted on. For each discipline we take the average percentage of possible that members actually shot, across the two most recent completed seasons (2024-25 and 2025-26). The hardest discipline — the one with the lowest average — is pinned to ×1.000, and every easier discipline is scaled down from there:

handicap factor = hardest discipline’s average % ÷ this discipline’s average %

Discipline	Day max	Season max	Avg % of possible	Handicap factor
F Standard hardest	120	1200	89.36%	×1.000
Target Rifle	100	1000	89.97%	×0.993
F-TR	120	1200	91.47%	×0.977
F Open	120	1200	94.58%	×0.945
Sporter easiest	100	1000	96.39%	×0.927

Because the numbers are measured from real results, they are re-published each year and can shift a little as new seasons are added. The committee can override any factor if a season’s data looks unrepresentative. Note that F Standard and Target Rifle currently sit within 0.6 of a percentage point of each other — effectively a tie for hardest.

Last season as a worked example — 2025–26

The Don Nicols starts in 2026–27, but here is what the full 2025–26 season would have looked like scored this way, using the published 2024-25 and 2025-26 factors. “Raw” is each shooter’s best-two-per-distance aggregate on its native scale (out of 1200 or 1000); the Don Nicols column puts everyone on the same handicapped /1000 scale. Only display names are shown.

#	Member	Discipline	Raw aggregate	Handicap	Don Nicols /1000	Days
1	Anthony F	TR	969.74 /1000	×0.993	962.4	14
2	Trent H	FTR	1182.83 /1200	×0.977	962.2	22
3	John R	TR	951.62 /1000	×0.993	944.5	32
4	Robert K	FO	1186.95 /1200	×0.945	933.8	29
5	Ivan C	SP	1000.138 /1000	×0.927	927.0	15
6	Mat S	SP	1000.130 /1000	×0.927	927.0	27
7	Phil M	SP	999.130 /1000	×0.927	926.1	33
8	Justin P	SP	999.126 /1000	×0.927	926.1	28
9	Brendan U	SP	996.121 /1000	×0.927	923.3	16
10	Seb B	SP	995.127 /1000	×0.927	922.4	16
11	Joseph D	SP	994.119 /1000	×0.927	921.4	29
12	Mike H	FO	1168.87 /1200	×0.945	919.6	19
13	Matt D	SP	974.81 /1000	×0.927	902.9	14
14	Goran P	SP	958.84 /1000	×0.927	888.1	19
15	Ken H	TR	878.39 /1000	×0.993	872.0	15
16	Jamie C	FO	1059.83 /1200	×0.945	833.8	12
17	Bill C	SP	885.84 /1000	×0.927	820.4	15
18	Iain S	TR	804.42 /1000	×0.993	798.5	16
19	John K	FO	899.55 /1200	×0.945	707.8	8
20	Daniel S	FO	794.39 /1200	×0.945	625.1	7
21	Vlado K	SP	671.62 /1000	×0.927	622.0	8
22	Steve Mc	FO	776.32 /1200	×0.945	611.0	9
23	Damian M	FS	693.19 /1200	×1.000	577.5	12
24	Peter C	FS	656.24 /1200	×1.000	546.7	6
25	Juliet C	FO	643.28 /1200	×0.945	506.3	6
26	Leigh C	SP	492.51 /1000	×0.927	456.1	5
27	Greg S	SP	457.23 /1000	×0.927	423.6	6
28	Paul C	SP	394.35 /1000	×0.927	365.2	6
29	Owen C	SP	393.40 /1000	×0.927	364.3	4
30	AJ	TR	366.21 /1000	×0.993	363.5	4
31	Don H	SP	378.35 /1000	×0.927	350.4	4
32	Will C	SP	369.27 /1000	×0.927	342.1	4
33	Tess J	SP	369.20 /1000	×0.927	342.1	4
34	David B	FS	332.14 /1200	×1.000	276.7	3
35	Jordan Z	SP	290.24 /1000	×0.927	268.8	3
36	Andrew S	SP	264.15 /1000	×0.927	244.7	3
37	Ilona B	FS	223.12 /1200	×1.000	185.8	2
38	Leo P	SP	191.15 /1000	×0.927	177.1	2
39	James T	SP	188.14 /1000	×0.927	174.3	3
40	Giary N	SP	186.11 /1000	×0.927	172.4	3
41	Andrew M	SP	171.7 /1000	×0.927	158.5	2
42	Tom B	FS	109.2 /1200	×1.000	90.8	1
43	Nik K	SP	97.10 /1000	×0.927	89.9	1
44	Jack S	FS	97.2 /1200	×1.000	80.8	1
45	Daisy J	FS	89.0 /1200	×1.000	74.2	1

“Days” is how many scoring days that shooter recorded across the season. Like the club championship, the Don Nicols rewards shooting all five distances — a shooter who only attends a few distances cannot reach the top of the table. This example is illustrative: 2025–26 is one of the two seasons the factors are measured from.