The Fallacy of leveling the playing field

[JimmyZip]

Bigbrown.

There is no fallacy really, you CAN level the playing feild. Set up any legal stage within the rules of our sport, and let those that come with the appropriate equipment and safety skills shoot. We all know it is a MATCH. There will be winners, and losers. Most matches I attend anyway, people try to make each stage different and interesting enough to keep you coming back, but also challenging your skills, being they run-and-gun, hosefests, or accuracy/weakhand/classifiers, etc.

That's about as fair as you can get in our sport really. Just be safe, try and make the WSBs as accurate as possible, and easy to understand, and let the cream rise to the top. If people think we have to do more than that, whatever, they're nuts. We're running matches, where winning in your class, or even getting that classifier to advance your class overall means alot to us, at least most anyway.

This is sport. Don't sweat the small stuff. If some of us want to practice and do well, well then we will advance wether or not someone is trying to make the matches friendly to one group or all groups. You know what happens, the prepared and tuned-in shooters almost always win. The others shoot the bull, hopefully tape when they're supposed to instead of just gabbing, and hopefully help with set up and tear down.

Can't see expecting anything else at a match except maybe common decency ( no bump against our current nat revo champion and a certain hot tub incident) and basic repect toward your fellow competitors that makes this the sport of the good people.

Anyway, I've rambled enough.

JZ

[larry weeks]

Very interesting reading this one. Won't ever be a level field. I'm always going to be one of those at the bottom, I'm old, fat, out of shape and don't practice or dry fire enough. My own darn fault. I don't mind though, I enjoy shooting, trying to figure out how to shoot a stage, meeting other shooters, and seeing what gear and techniques they use. I did mention to Aaron Hampton of AMU that I hoped to shoot their match this year but was worried about really tough, physical stages, climbing and running. He said they have two factors they figure in, the Benny Hill factor and the Daniel Horner factor. Figured I was good because I resemble Benny in shape and Daniel in height (tho' he's a veritable giant compared to me). On that subject, should we make Daniel hop on one leg in stages with more that a 20 foot run to level the field? To me it's an honor just to get to shoot alongside folks like Trapr and Daniel and Jerry and appreciate their superb skill and natural ability. I don't have it but it makes me feel good to see folks that do perform at such a high level. Someone said it in another post, I'll never get to play football alongside an NFL player, in the gun sports I get to walk a stage with the best pros.

[Sterling White]

It can be done but it takes a creative mind to do it! I've experienced it once in a great while and those stages are put away in the memory bank.

For example... at the High Plains Shotgun match this year you had a stage which required us to shoot one load one. Guess that makes you a creative person Trapr!

Another example was at the Ironman on virginia round count stage. At our local matches every once in a while the design team will put up a stage with the targets at 3-7 yards and no more than 4 targets to a cluster with 4 or 5 clusters - talk about drag race.

[mpeltier]

should we make Daniel hop on one leg in stages with more that a 20 foot run to level the field?

He would still win...

The playing field is level. As long as everyone gets to shoot the same stage(s) under the same rules, is it not the same for all? Only differance is in the shooter/competitor, and if you don't like the scores at the end of the day, either work harder or accept the result.

[benny hill]

I need a level playing field, tired of running up & down the damn hills. Also short .

[MarkCO]

The playing field is level. As long as everyone gets to shoot the same stage(s) under the same rules, is it not the same for all? Only differance is in the shooter/competitor, and if you don't like the scores at the end of the day, either work harder or accept the result.

Yep, you are 100% right!