NAIG medallist a straight shooter

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Stephanie Sinclair remembers exactly what ran through her mind when the gold medal for junior women's rifle shooting was draped around her neck at this year's North American Indigenous Games.

"It was so overwhelming. I just started crying. All these things came back into my head, the baking, all the days I went to practice. All my hard work paid off."

In fact, it took more than a few table loads of baking to raise enough money for Sinclair to buy a competition-calibre gun and travel from Opaskwayak Cree Nation to the games in Winnipeg this past August. Her Marvel .22 cost $900 alone, but her single-minded pursuit of her goal, together with a lot of help from family and other supporters, got her what she needed.

Twenty-year-old Sinclair uses words like determined, challenge and sense of accomplishment a lot when she talks about her journey to the NAIG gold medal and her future plans. Her success at an introductory event at school on Peguis First Nation when she was 15 told her she she'd found her sport.

"That first day I shot very well. I even surprised myself. I really enjoyed it," Sinclair said.

"I guess I was a born talent," she said. "My coach told me I was shooting as if I'd been shooting for many years."

Sinclair's life and goals suddenly came into very clear focus. She got down to serious training with coach Michael Sutherland for the 1996 North American Indigenous Games in Victoria. Training included familiarizing herself with the rules for the qualifying events for the games, as well as learning about the different weights of rifles (Sinclair prefers an 8-pound gun), handling and sighting guns and gun safety.

And hours of shooting practice, of course. Sutherland provided the rifle, ammunition and targets for Sinclair to train that year. Then the big moment, the games themselves, arrived.

"I would like to say I did really well the first day," Sinclair said. "I was in first place on the first day. The second day, the gun fell apart. Something warped, and I couldn't sight my gun."

It was an old rifle, and pieces literally started falling off. She couldn't continue, and her standing bottomed from first to fifth. Although very grateful for the equipment Sutherland had provided her, Sinclair decided "right then and there" that it was time for her to get her own gun.

She qualified for the next North American Indigenous Games in Fargo, which were cancelled, then she moved with her family from Peguis to Opaskwayak Cree Nation when she was 16. She got a call from Michael Sutherland: 'qualifiers are coming up for the 2002 games, are you in?'

Sinclair was in school at the time, so training in Winnipeg would be difficult, if not impossible.

"I can do this here on my own," she decided, and enlisted her dad, Norman, as her coach.

"Since my dad was a hunter, and he knew about rifles, he was my next coach. He was a really good coach. He pushed me to my limits," Sinclair said. The father-daughter relationship became submerged in the day-to-day partnership of coach-trainee.

In 1999 she placed first in the qualifiers in Winnipeg with another borrowed rifle.

"I got back to The Pas and said, 'I'm determined to get the gold.' I sat down with my dad and said, 'I need help. I need my own gun.'"

That's when the bake sales started, marathons beginning around three in the afternoon and ending at five the next morning-and that was just the baking.

Then there were the hours sitting at a table in the Otineka Mall on Opaskwayak Cree Nation. Money from "bake sale after bake sale after bake sale" enabled Sinclair to buy her rifle. She also received some travel money from the Manitoba Metis Federation.

Sinclair trained with her dad about 20 hours a week, taking care of her baby daughter, Mercedes, during the day. The routine-training, childcare, gym workouts to strengthen her forearms and wrists-started to get tiring. She'd have some intensely focused days shooting, and others where things wouldn't come together.

"Someties you've got to walk away," Sinclair says of those "off" times. "You know there'll be a better day. But I was praying to God I wouldn't feel that way the day of the competition."

She didn't. She clinched first place in her event the first day, shooting 60 shots in three series of 20 shots in prone, kneeling and standing positions at a range of 50 metres. And she held it to the end. The gold medal Sinclair earned was one of 165 taken home by Team Manitoba athletes, the highest gold count of any team.

Now Sinclair's concentrating on completing her Grade 12, which she expects to finish next January. Then she's got her sights set on computer training at Keewatin Community College in The Pas.

"I want to get a good-paying job, to be on the go all the time, to be a good role model for my daughter," she said.

As for shooting...

"I want to take it to the Olympics. Not rifle shooting. Trap shooting. My gold medal was just my first step. After getting my gold medal, I know I can get what I want if I put my heart and mind to it."