Wood was crowned the top senior male student in the state at the Echuca event on September 5, after finishing with a perfect score of 30/30, followed by 9/10 in a shoot-off.

Year eight schoolmates Bridie Mason and Dana Russell also excelled, with the former placing fourth and the latter top-10 in the junior girls' category.

All three students train weekly, as part of Emmanuel College's extra curricular clay target shooting program run in conjunction with the Warrnambool Clay Target Shooting Club.

Teachers David Beard, Marko Wakim and Cathy Brown aid in running the sessions with the club.

Wood, who has been shooting in the program for two years, began competition shooting a year ago.

He has however been shooting most of his life.

"I've been shooting since I can remember and we got the opportunity to come out here and do clay target shooting with school, so we took it and just kept doing it," he said.

The teenager said he wasn't expecting to do so well at the state championships.

"I know a lot of the good shooters that were there," he said.

"I thought I was in a bit of trouble but I came through on the day, I was pretty happy about that."

Unfortunately there is no national championship for Wood to advance to, so he is focused on continuing his form at upcoming Victorian and club events.

Mason only began clay target shooting last year and was "ecstatic" to come fourth.

"It's the first time I've ever gone to state and to get a pretty high ranking in it was pretty good," she said.

The eighth-grader is relishing her new activity which she said wasn't your usual sport like football and netball.

She hopes to compete at the state titles in 2023 and better this year's result with a third or second-place result.

Russell is also fairly new to clay target shooting and didn't expect to perform so well at Echuca.

"I only started this year, I didn't think I would get this far," she said.

The Emmanuel College pupil took up the sport after seeing her brother and friends take part and thought it might be "pretty cool" to try her hand.

"I'm loving it," Russell said.

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