Any Match Directors?

[aslrookie]

I am working with a local range to host a shooting competition for this coming summer in 2020. I have spent 3 years creating, hosting and running firearms classes, but this will be my first match as a head honcho. I've been shooting various competitions for about 4 years now, so I know what I like, dislike and format style to get what's in my mind into action.

I am looking for feedback on the small things MD's deal with other than the meat & potatoes obvious stuff like stage planning, scoring and etc. Easiest scoring method? Stage flow? Is providing food worth it or no? What things would a new MD not think about to cover?

The match is 2-gun based with par-time on each stage, targets range from 5-300 yards just for a brief synopsis of what I am doing.

 

[Birddog6424]

Keep it simple. Scoring system of one hit, one point.

Dont get fancy or cute with your stages. No swingy things, carnival rides or other BS that a shooter has no means of practicing or preparing for and will never see anywhere else. My simple litmus to stage design is creating a fair opportunity for the shooters to earn their points. Does it allow a skilled shooter to score well versus a beginner?

Eliminate luck in the scoring system. Dicing games or luck of the draw targets dont belong, they create an unequal playing field.

Be prepared for someone to create a better mousetrap. The "intent" of your stage description is irrelevant. If you have a loophole and a shooter exploits it and finds a better way to shoot your stage than you intended, clap them on the back for a job well done, and learn to write better stage descriptions. Dont get upset, and most certainly dont throw out the stage. Live and learn.

Err on the side of the shooter. As the MD you may be faced with a shooter who feels strongly about a hit the RO didnt award. Unless there is strong evidence from people on glass who clearly saw the miss, look for ways to not let the whole discussion turn into an argument and have a shooter walk away angry. Even if it means awarding a point that you aren't sure they earned.

Food is always appreciated and welcome at a match. It's a great opportunity for the shooters to have some laughs.

At the end of the day the goal is simple. Everyone wants to have a good time. Keep it simple, avoid stages and stage descriptions that may lead to confusion.

Good luck!

 

[Mordamer]

I'll just mention this as a left handed shooter. MD's often design positions which are totally doable as a right handed shooter, but almost impossible to shoot as a lefty. This is not a big deal to me as long as there is an equal number of positions that screw the right handed guys.

I'll give you 2 examples from the recent PRS Finale.

1. Big stack of rocks where one position was up on top of the stack of rocks. The right handed shooters had a perfect place to stand to shoot with their gun at the required location. Lefty's needed to be able to levitate to shoot that spot. Many chose to shoot it weak sided. I like having to innovate, but I'd have appreciated if one of the other positions on the same stage was a mirror image and made right handers do the same thing.

2. There was a stage with a very slanted rail that ran from top right to bottom left. Works great for a right handed shooter to use their support hand to hold the rifle on the rail. No good way to shoot that position as a lefty. There was no rail slanted the other way so Lefty's got the shaft again.

Keep this in mind and if you design a position that screws right handed people then just do the same to Lefty's as well.

 

[TonyTheTiger]

Dont get fancy or cute with your stages. No swingy things, carnival rides or other BS that a shooter has no means of practicing or preparing for and will never see anywhere else. My simple litmus to stage design is creating a fair opportunity for the shooters to earn their points. Does it allow a skilled shooter to score well versus a beginner?

Eliminate luck in the scoring system. Dicing games or luck of the draw targets dont belong, they create an unequal playing field.

Yes!

 

[Dthomas3523]

Keep it simple. Scoring system of one hit, one point.

Dont get fancy or cute with your stages. No swingy things, carnival rides or other BS that a shooter has no means of practicing or preparing for and will never see anywhere else. My simple litmus to stage design is creating a fair opportunity for the shooters to earn their points. Does it allow a skilled shooter to score well versus a beginner?

Eliminate luck in the scoring system. Dicing games or luck of the draw targets dont belong, they create an unequal playing field.

Be prepared for someone to create a better mousetrap. The "intent" of your stage description is irrelevant. If you have a loophole and a shooter exploits it and finds a better way to shoot your stage than you intended, clap them on the back for a job well done, and learn to write better stage descriptions. Dont get upset, and most certainly dont throw out the stage. Live and learn.

Err on the side of the shooter. As the MD you may be faced with a shooter who feels strongly about a hit the RO didnt award. Unless there is strong evidence from people on glass who clearly saw the miss, look for ways to not let the whole discussion turn into an argument and have a shooter walk away angry. Even if it means awarding a point that you aren't sure they earned.

Food is always appreciated and welcome at a match. It's a great opportunity for the shooters to have some laughs.

At the end of the day the goal is simple. Everyone wants to have a good time. Keep it simple, avoid stages and stage descriptions that may lead to confusion.

Good luck!

I like the way @JC Steel described his process for dealing with shots shooters think they hit.

Inform RO’s to award the shooter the point (unless extremely sure or multiple people on glass saw miss), without argument. On scoresheet or paper or however, just make a note of the shooter.

At the end of the day, if there is a pattern of a particular shooter jockeying for points, the MD can speak with shooter and if necessary take some sort of action.

Keeps arguments from happening during the match and at the stage.

 

[Birddog6424]

The PRS Finale was also well-handled.

They had an arbitration period after the completion of each squad. They read off each shooters score and asked if anyone wished to dispute it. And they addressed it then.

At lots matches shooters leave their squad and move to the next stage before the squad is finished. Shannon said he didnt want that to happen, and this arbitration process supported that.

 

[LH_Gina]

I'll add to @Birddog6424's thought here. Find someone you trust who you know pushes boundaries at competitions. Give them hypotheticals (or better yet, have them help you design stages) to see how they'd defeat your stage design. We have a group at my local club that are really good at finding holes in how a stage is written. Utilizing their input has helped tremendously on how we write stages, how we build props, and how we set our stage times.

And @Mordamer is 100% right about the lefty vs righty stages. It's easy enough to run through the available positions beforehand to guarantee it's fair for both. I also check height on all of our props. If a position is too high for someone 5'6" and under to safely shoot from, then we offer a lower option. I'm 5'9" so I roped a couple of 5' and under ladies and juniors into checking all the positions.

Figure out what skills you're testing. Good matches have stages that are focused with each stage testing one or two skill sets. For example, are you testing the ability to read wind? Build a position quickly? Target acquisition? Movers? Hold over/unders? Adding a stressor isn't difficult - usually a tight par time does that well enough. Deciding what skill your testing seems to be a tough one for some MD's to focus on so they throw everything at a competitor at once instead of choosing one or two things. Trust me, it's a rare competitor who wants to shoot 5 different difficult to locate targets at 5 different ranges in switchy wind from 10 different positions in 90 seconds.

I've yet to go to a match where shooters didn't love having food provided. We've supplied food both days at all of our 2-day matches. Scoring is easy enough when it's one point per hit. If you're looking for a tie breaker, then track time on a stage or two. Practiscore is easy enough to use for that with a little practice beforehand.

 

[Birddog6424]

And @Mordamer is 100% right about the lefty vs righty stages. It's easy enough to run through the available positions beforehand to guarantee it's fair for both.

Haha, spoken like a true lefty..

You'll have to get back to our match again this year in Parma. We'll toss in a stage just for you where righties have no room to work their bolt.

 

[aslrookie]

Thank you all for the good feedback. You guys pointed out some things I haven’t thought of yet.

The idea to host my own match is out of selfishness. I am not a 3-gun shooter, but I enjoy 2-gun and USPSA. There is only one 2-gun series in the state, and it’s not very exciting and doesn’t draw much talent.

I have a rough draft for format and scoring as of right now. My plan is have a beta test match with people of varying skill levels and experience. See how the gamers do things vs people who’ve never shot a match before or very few matches.

 

[Birddog6424]

Sounds like a good place to start.

It'll get smoother as you go..

 

[aslrookie]

Anyone know how the tablets work? Does the tablet produce it's own Wifi network or does it have to connect to an existing network? I am just trying to figure out how to score shooters for stages with split stage locations.

All I can find on amazon is how to connect it to a wifi but not whether it produces it's own like a gopro to a phone.

 

[LH_Gina]

Anyone know how the tablets work? Does the tablet produce it's own Wifi network or does it have to connect to an existing network? I am just trying to figure out how to score shooters for stages with split stage locations.

All I can find on amazon is how to connect it to a wifi but not whether it produces it's own like a gopro to a phone.

We use a hotspot on one of our phones to sync our tablets.

 

[Alpine 338]

Everything mentioned above is really good advice. I'll add a few things...

Match flow. Try to keep stage times, stage brief, etc. uniform, otherwise you will have multiple squads bunching up at one stage, with the possibility of an RO sitting idle at the next stage waiting for a squad to show up.

Brass, no one likes a lost brass match, especially those shooting expensive hard to obtain brass, or brass that requires fire-forming. Come up with a plan. An example is have the shooter who previously shot the stage, put their rifle and gear just off to the side, and pickup brass for the one currently shooting. Without a plan, you'll have delays with shooters spending time looking for their precious brass, especially if the stage requires movement, or there's a lot of crevices for brass to fall into.

Have the squad stay together, and move as a squad, helping each other out with tasks like picking up brass, helping the RO spot, etc. This also provides the RO on the stage to take a bathroom, lunch, mental brake between squads, and perform one stage briefing. Otherwise, you will have shooters moving ahead after they shoot, pestering the RO and shooters on the next stage, asking what does the stage entail, where are the targets, how did it get shot, etc. And then you have to wait on the stragglers who where last to shoot at the previous stage.

You didn't mention if the match is in the field, or on a square range? One is generally easier to control how and where rifles are placed or grounded, and pointing in a safe direction. Formulate a plan on how you will control this, and discuss it with the shooters and RO's prior to the match, otherwise you'll have shooters placing and pointing their rifles in every concevable direction.

 

[aslrookie]

Everything mentioned above is really good advice. I'll add a few things...

Match flow. Try to keep stage times, stage brief, etc. uniform, otherwise you will have multiple squads bunching up at one stage, with the possibility of an RO sitting idle at the next stage waiting for a squad to show up.

Brass, no one likes a lost brass match, especially those shooting expensive hard to obtain brass, or brass that requires fire-forming. Come up with a plan. An example is have the shooter who previously shot the stage, put their rifle and gear just off to the side, and pickup brass for the one currently shooting. Without a plan, you'll have delays with shooters spending time looking for their precious brass, especially if the stage requires movement, or there's a lot of crevices for brass to fall into.

Have the squad stay together, and move as a squad, helping each other out with tasks like picking up brass, helping the RO spot, etc. This also provides the RO on the stage to take a bathroom, lunch, mental brake between squads, and perform one stage briefing. Otherwise, you will have shooters moving ahead after they shoot, pestering the RO and shooters on the next stage, asking what does the stage entail, where are the targets, how did it get shot, etc. And then you have to wait on the stragglers who where last to shoot at the previous stage.

You didn't mention if the match is in the field, or on a square range? One is generally easier to control how and where rifles are placed or grounded, and pointing in a safe direction. Formulate a plan on how you will control this, and discuss it with the shooters and RO's prior to the match, otherwise you'll have shooters placing and pointing their rifles in every concevable direction.

Thank you for the input. This is a 2-gun match, so if anyone is running and gunning with a fancy custom caliber...better count on losing their brass lol.

I like the point about staging rifles. Haven’t thought of that yet because I always just sling mine. It’s on a square range, so rifles can be staged at a designated safety area like 3-gun matches.

 

[Alpine 338]

Thank you for the input. This is a 2-gun match, so if anyone is running and gunning with a fancy custom caliber...better count on losing their brass lol.

I like the point about staging rifles. Haven’t thought of that yet because I always just sling mine. It’s on a square range, so rifles can be staged at a designated safety area like 3-gun matches.

Gotcha, when I read 2-gun, in my mind I'm thinking precision rifle and carbine, which are common out here in the Western U.S.

 

[Swoodhouse19]

Clearly marked safe/staging zones for firearms is big. paint a box and stage them up.

Sounds like a fun match...keep is posted on how it turns out