IDPA World Shoot thoughts

[Ahab]

I know a bunch of the guys here shot the World Shoot, so there's got to be a big ol' collection of thoughts on it. For example, the stages for the most part were pretty awesome. Especially the stage that consisted of nothing but moving/reactive targets.

The one thing I really wanted to talk about was the squad-mom SO position; I honestly felt like this was one of the best things ever at a major match. Having one person outside of the squad to sort the shooter order, deal with stickers, etc takes some of the work off the shooters and allows them to focus on the match, and I also thing takes some of the pressure off the stage SOs because they don't have to deal with that either.

So really just post your thoughts on the match, what you liked/didn't like (the heat/rain) and what we could do to make it better next time they call it a "World Championship".

[Steve Koski]

Overall it was awesome, fun, and tiring. The organizers really did a super job.

I learned how naive I was about the extent of round dumping on the super squads. They dumped rounds like mad men. That rule/situation is pretty disgusting.

Agreed - the stages were outstanding. The shotgun stage was unbelievably fun, even if you farked it up.

The Squad Safety Officers (Squad Moms) made the SO's life so much better. We were turning squads of 7 shooters through two quick stages in our bay every 20-21 minutes. A great idea. Never would/could have happened without the Moms.

[Strick]

I think the match staff did a great job considering the heat/humidity and the massive amount of rain early/mid week. The squad SO worked pretty well and did seem to take some load of the both shooter and stage SO. For the most part the stages were OK, there were some that really challenged shooters to make some good shots.

I didn't like 22+ stages just to have 22+ stages. There were more than enough of 6 round hammer drill type stages, 1 or 2 maybe, 6 or more just seems like filler. I also didn't like the number of stages that were just a test of whether the shooter memorized the sequence shots needed to be made.

The one thing that I really disliked and don't think belongs at a National/World Championship match is a complete stage shot stronghand only with a stage gun. I think that is not a fair test of a shooter since not every shooter has shot a 1911 or even a .45.

Overall I think they did a pretty good job and it was pretty cool to see the other countries celebrating as much as they did at the banquet. You could see the pride they had about coming here to compete.

[Paul-the new guy]

The squad mom was a great help, I wish mine had been a hot mom instead of an old english guy! ;-) The SO's did a great job in spite of the bugs and heat and rain and mud. I blew the strong hand .45 use a 1911 stage because I was very uncomfortable using that gun. I used my weak hand to help pick up the gun and then put it right back on the wound before I fired a shot but I still got a 3 second PE on a 2.5 second stage I know thew COF said to keep pressure on the wound so it was my fault. The match seemed to be pretty well organized. some of the stages were great. I thought there was a pretty good mix of mental stages and standards type stages. The stage in the woods was my favorite. I shot that one again on Sunday with Bob Vogel coaching me and went from 24 seconds to 16

What I found to be some not great things.... I didn't like everyone going hot at the beginning of each stage. I don't think it saved any time and I spent at least 5 minutes per stage freaking out about where LAMR mag was. I felt very akward walking back to get my vest with a hot gun on my side. The banquet was ok but the awards thing seemed to drag on for hours! It was HOT as hell on my side of the tent. The one little speaker sucked, we are all shooters and half of us are old so a lot of us were like what??? I did hear them call my name to get my trophy though. At the end, they said oh, there are some prizes in the corner...if you wanted to know if you could have possibly won something you had to get in an extremely long and very un-organized line. I had no idea what they were giving out but after standing in 1 place for 20 minutes I decided whatever it was was not worth it. I wish the vendor tents would have been open at the end of the shooting on Saturday. I had been looking at some Rudy Project shooting glasses and I figured I would pick them up at the end of shooting while waiting for the scores....the vendors were all gone.

I would do it again just because there were some great people on my squaf and at the match in general.

[Filishooter]

Didn't like that half the competitors (including the SOs) shot in partial rain Monday-Thursday the other half shot under clear skies Friday and Saturday. I realize that's just the way it is with a long match, but it still sucked for the groups that slopped though the match when your competition has more favorable conditions.

Didn't like that half of the competitors shot 5 stages that were thrown out and the other half, who shot later in the week didn't even have to shoot them. It was long days of shooting and not shooting 5 stages might (or might not) leave more capacity to focus on the stages that really counted. Again, just luck of the draw, but it might be a reason to squad on the final days of the match. By the way, I did really well on 4 of the 5 that were tossed, so that personally sucked for me! Why couldn't they have tossed the stages I screwed up on?!

The chrono/equipment check was extra thorough on checking out M&Ps. Seems like he looked at mine for a good 5 minutes then told me I may have to "see him tomorrow"? The guy before me, the SO was commenting about his "trigger job". There was nothing wrong with our guns, the guy before me even said his gun was bone stock? I heard him telling someone else that Dan Burwell showed him all of the tricks you can do with the M&P, so I just assume he was putting his newfound knowledge to use, most likely checking that all the safeties are working. I don't have a problem with being thorough, but telling me I might need to see him tomorrow was over the top. If I'm going to be DQ'd do it right there on the spot.

Yeah, the PA system sounded like my daughter's cheap Karaoke machine.

Stages were good, lots and lots of swingers. I didn't mind them but I can see how some shooters who don't shoot them a lot might have gotten tired of them.

SO's and volunteers were great. Free drinks all day was nice. Squad mom idea was excellent.

Edited September 26, 2011 by Filishooter

[Paul-the new guy]

Didn't like that half of the competitors shot 5 stages that were thrown out and the other half, who shot later in the week didn't even have to shoot them. It was long days of shooting and not shooting 5 stages might (or might not) leave more capacity to focus on the stages that really counted. Again, just luck of the draw, but it might be a reason to squad on the final days of the match. By the way, I did really well on 4 of the 5 that were tossed, so that personally sucked for me! Why couldn't they have tossed the stages I screwed up on?!

SO's and volunteers were great. Free drinks all day was nice. Squad mom idea was excellent.

I was not happy that those easy stages were thrown out either. I was looking to make up some ground on those stages and was not happy when they were gone. It is what it is. I had some bad stages and felt like those were going to be walk in the park easy fast accurate stages.

[Strick]

If they are fast, easy to hit stages then that is not where you would have picked up ground.

[Paul-the new guy]

If they are fast, easy to hit stages then that is not where you would have picked up ground.

I am only a marksman and I usually smoke all of the marksman and all of the sharp shooters and most of the experts on those kinds of stages. That is what I was hoping to do. Where I mess up is on the more technical stages. I gave the match away by shooting the 2 stages that called for 3 shots per target, the boat one and the one before it, but only shooting 2 rounds per target. I missed 1st by 30 seconds and those -5's and 1 ftn easily added up to 30 seconds.

[Kali]

FWIW, they weren't all quick fast stages that were tossed.

Stage 13 was a 15 round scenario stage,

stage17 was an 18 round drill stage,

stage 18 was a 12 round drill stage and

stage 21 was a 12 round scenario stage

The only one that was a quick easy was stage 20, a 6 round Bill drill "filler stage". if they were concerned about time they shouldn't have added the filler stages in the first place IMO. As mentioned it was like deja vu shooting Bill Drills 3 or 4 times in a match.

Edited September 27, 2011 by Kali

[davehorn]

I have somewhat mixed feelings on the match. The squad mom was awesome and truly helped the match move along. I also had the Brit (Brian, great guy), he was super helpful. I think the match was run very efficiently and despite shooting over 10 stages a day, it went pretty quick. I think by the time the last squads shot, the poor SOs who had been there all week were on their last legs. While I truly appreciate their work, I don't want to hear them saying "lets hurry up and shoot this so we can get out of here". I know you're tired, but I paid $250 bucks to shoot a world class match, I don't want to be rushed. Another thing that I wasn't crazy about was all the t-shirt covered targets. It's fun for a stage to add something different, but I'm not sure it was necessary to do it on a number of stages.

[sirveyr]

Which SO attempted to give Vogel the PE for incorrectly placing his sticker on the score sheet?

Bob is a friggin' beast! How does one CRUSH the entire field at a World Championship by 30+ seconds?

[Kali]

Which SO attempted to give Vogel the PE for incorrectly placing his sticker on the score sheet?

Bob is a friggin' beast! How does one CRUSH the entire field at a World Championship by 30+ seconds?

Most his usual competition stayed in Vegas?

[lugnut]

Which SO attempted to give Vogel the PE for incorrectly placing his sticker on the score sheet?

Bob is a friggin' beast! How does one CRUSH the entire field at a World Championship by 30+ seconds?

That's funny. Bob is damn right a machine- he did the same thing at the last Indoor Nats. He knows how to hook up in IDPA matches for damn sure.

[Steve Koski]

Vogel absolutely crushed the two stages I SO'd. A couple people approached his times, but had significantly more points down. He was fun as hell to watch.

[T Bacus]

All in all I had a pretty good time. I think the SO's should have tarred and feathered who ever designed their match shirts, way to heavy a fabric for a week of working out in hot humid weather. I agree that the t-shirt covered target/no-shoot should propably be done away with. It doesn't really make the shots or target identification any harder but it does slow down scoring.

I got lucky, shot on Friday and Saturday and missed the rain. There were many fun stages to shoot, lots of moving targets. I had the pleasure of shooting with the team from Trinidad-Tobago, a great bunch of guys. And best of all, the chance to see people I haven't seen in years.

[ThunderStorm]

Anyone have a link to the match book? I have seen a couple of the videos but would love to read the book.

Thanks

[Ahab]

I agree with the T-shirts; while having them on one or two stages provides a neat change of pace, having them all over the place seemed kind of overkill.

[sirveyr]

Range Commands

I have been watching some videos from the World Shoot and I've noticed that there were a lot of non-standard range commands given to the shooters.

LAMR:

"load it up"

"gimme six"

"does the shooter understand the COF"

ITSR:

"gimme a nod when your ready"

ULSC:

"drop the magazine"

"mag out"

"if you are finished show me clear"

"if you are finished lemme me see clear, I see clear, stand and shoot the berm"

SFHD:

"slide it, hammer it"

I know this isn't a huge deal to some people, but standard range commands are what allows IDPA to be International. Being that this was a World Championship, I would've thought that using the standard IDPA commands would've been of the utmost importance. I have witnessed foreign shooters stare at an SO when the SO told him to "Gas it up!" instead of LAMR and I've seen a shooter LAMR when the SO said," Do ya understand the COF?"

Note to Duane: I am not bashing IDPA, the IDPA World Championship, IDPA HQ, the IDPA rule book,or any of the hard working SO/match staff, I am merely noting some observations.

[The_Vigilante]

Makes you wonder if they used SO's who weren't really SO's?

[Ahab]

Just from watching my own footage, there has been some real interesting inconsistencies with the range commands as mentioned above. I don't think that's a really big issue, but at a World or National Championship it's definitely something that should be addressed in SO meetings before the match. In all seriousness though, that's part of a larger issue of SO consistency. On one stage, our squad asked "what defines cover on this stage" so that we would know where it was okay to reload. We asked the exact same question on another stage and were told "I can't tell you that, that's coaching." So obviously there's an issue there.

That being said, I really don't want this to turn into an World Shoot bashing thread, because I do think it was an excellent match. Particularly in terms of stage design, although I certainly could have used a few less swingers.

[gb32]

I thought the stages were good and my overall feeling about the match is positive. I thought that there was a degree of impatience on some of the bays that could have been avoided. I understand what SOs have to deal with but I'd like to have some opportunity to figure out what to do. I like the squad SO concept and it looked to me like some squads had great ones.

Congratulations to the winners and thanks to everyone who made this match happen.

GB

[Ted Murphy]

With regards to the range commands. After six days in that godawful heat with all the rain, bugs, and whatnot, they may just have been tired and messed up the range commands. I know when I get very tired "range is safe" alternates with "range is clear" sometimes. Most of us officiate more than one sport after all.

And since some of the SO's are life members of the NRA and their hearing is not what it should be, I have learned to excuse the "Nod when you are ready" command when I hear it as some of them cannot hear you too well when your back is to them.

Ted Murphy

[Steve Koski]

The range commands were widely varied from day 1.

My favorite new sequence was:

slide back

slide forward

shoot the berm

clear

Funny thing, I think I gave Robert Ray an abbreviated set when he shot my bay. Whoops.

unload and show clear

slide

hammer

holster

range is safe

Edited September 27, 2011 by Steve Koski

[lugnut]

Range Commands

I have been watching some videos from the World Shoot and I've noticed that there were a lot of non-standard range commands given to the shooters.

LAMR:

"load it up"

"gimme six"

"does the shooter understand the COF"

ITSR:

"gimme a nod when your ready"

ULSC:

"drop the magazine"

"mag out"

"if you are finished show me clear"

"if you are finished lemme me see clear, I see clear, stand and shoot the berm"

SFHD:

"slide it, hammer it"

I know this isn't a huge deal to some people, but standard range commands are what allows IDPA to be International. Being that this was a World Championship, I would've thought that using the standard IDPA commands would've been of the utmost importance. I have witnessed foreign shooters stare at an SO when the SO told him to "Gas it up!" instead of LAMR and I've seen a shooter LAMR when the SO said," Do ya understand the COF?"

Note to Duane: I am not bashing IDPA, the IDPA World Championship, IDPA HQ, the IDPA rule book,or any of the hard working SO/match staff, I am merely noting some observations.

Those are some funny ones for sure. But do you think they got paid more since it was a World Shoot? I'm just sayin... because I do both USPSA and IDPA... and I'll be damned if I don't mix them up from time to time.

[hankfan79]

While I agree there are specific range commands that are outlined in the IDPA rulebook, it's not a drastic event. This doesn't mean you get a re-shoot or anything like that. Some people (including myself) have used the command "Gimme a nod when you are ready" because I don't like asking the shooter over and over again if they are ready. I will let them dictate when they are ready.

I mean, you could be anal about it and wait for the S.O. to say "Striker Down" (which is NOT a range command) because you actually do not have a HAMMER with that particular weapon. It's all the same. Just shoot and have fun.