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Overall Match Design Considerations


Graham Smith

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This is a spin off of another thread and I'm hoping to get a discussion going on something I consider to be a very difficult aspect of being an MD - designing balance into a match.

This is only my second year as MD but our club (Southern Chester County PA) is something of a victim of it's own success. We have become a fairly popular match in no small part due to our long history of running a match that tries to always provide a mix of stages. I need to quickly point out that I am taking almost no credit for this. I'm mainly following the advice given to me by those who came before me.

We have always tried to go for balance - some long stages, some short, some fast, some slower, and a lot of chances to run and gun for those who like doing that while still allowing those who prefer to take their time to do just that. IOW, something for everyone, old and new, fast and slow. Balanced.

The biggest problem with something like this is that some stages, and some squads, will run slower than others. So there are always backups and bottle necks. If it gets too bad then people will just leave. And if that continues, some people will stop coming. And it's the most experienced shooters who are generally the first to go.

On more than one occasion, I've heard and read the advice along the line of this:

Design your stages to be shot and scored in 3 minute turns. If you do that, you meet the start and stop times.

While I recognize that this is sage advice, I don't know how to do that.

We have 6 ranges we setup in and each is a different size. As already mentioned, we try and provide a mix of different types of stages so right there is a guarantee that each stage will run at a different time.

Experience has shown that running 5 squads results in fewer backups even though the squads are larger than if we ran 6.

We try and increase the amount of steel we use on longer stages because it's much faster to score and reset.

Beyond that, I'm not sure what else can be done to balance things out and really have no idea how to estimate how long any stage will take to be shot and scored. I know full well that I could replace the two long(ish) field courses we run and easily knock 30-45 min off the length of the match. But at what cost?

So, I'd really like to hear from the experienced folks out there, how do you "Design your stages to be shot and scored in 3 minute turns." while still maintaining diversity? What cosmic epiphany am I missing here?

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I am by no means an expert, but I attend a lot of matches in Florida. The matches that run the best are the ones where talent is spread out. Some matches have the local super squads and new shooter squads. This in my opinion sucks, the super squads take forever because they argue and take their sweet time planning for perfection. The new shooter squads take forever because they aren't sure what to do. The best matches the MD's usually have their key players assigned to different squads to motivate, educate, and keep it moving. While some people hate this format because good shooters want to shoot with other good shooters, it is by far the quickest. We have some great MD's down in Florida that have their go to guys they spread between squads. If people aren't pasting, setting, or helping they speak up.

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First thing, all of bays need to rotate the squads at about the same time. This means equal sized squads, usually. So, control the squad size at sign up. Keep them even (during registration, pull a squad sign up sheet if it gets unbalanced). If you have some slow shooters...for whatever reason...make their squad a bit lighter.

Any complicated props that are likely to fail or take extra reset time (Star, for instance)...put those toward the start of the stage. (If you have a prop that doesn't always work...just keep it in the prop barn and don't use it!)

In fact, you can put on a great match without using lots of props. Every newer Match Director I have seen wants to empty out the prop barn for the first year or so. It's not about the props, it's about the shooting.

I sometimes put all the steel on one side of the bay, and all the paper on the other. One, that lets me use a skinny bay with steel (I can cheat the fault line to the other side to get the safety distance)... It also lets the RO score just half the bay (call the steel down and score the paper...less steps). Easier to reset, as well.

If you have NS and hard-cover targets, there needs to be the proper colored pasters down range. Always. Same with paint.

Start positions that take time after "Make Ready"...for get them. Keep it simple. If the shooter has to put a gun on a table...then go get on a bed...that is 30 seconds per shooter.

Look at your stage drawings and figure out how the RO is going to score it. You can often tweak things to make it more efficient (heck, look back through past stages that you have run with this thought in mind...you can probably pick up some pointers)

Assign jobs. Expect and trust that people do their jobs. Make somebody the steel czar...so they can check that the poppers are nailed down and set right (usually a Production shooter - Minor pf). Somebody to give the new shooter briefing? Range boxes in order? Got a Range Master? Make sure you do. The MD shouldn't be doing the RM duty too. Besides the conflict of interest, you need another person to be in charge of looking over the stages...so you can do other stuff.

Start the shooters meeting. Don't have a smoke first. Get the ball rolling.

Ask for help.

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If you have multiple small stages in the same bay be sure to stay hot between them and not have one squad shoot one stage then shoot the other can create a huge back up that will last for the whole day.

Multiple strings on a stage means it will be slower than you think for the round count.

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For our local matches the range we use has 4 bays to work with of varying sizes. We strive to make each bay from 28-32 rounds each for continuity, total round count near 125 seems to work best. In a larger bay we may have a 12 round & 16 round stage for variation, two 30-32 round field courses that can fit in our medium bays, and a classifier with another smaller stage. Our matches are usually 5-7 stages, round count 125ish, start @ 0900, usually done by 1300. If the bays are similar round count, and the squads have been split near equally they should move along at about the same pace. This unless one stage has activating props, or Tx star, or plate rack, etc...

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First thing, all of bays need to rotate the squads at about the same time.

Pretty much everything in you list are things we already do. But this is the one thing that still baffles me.

How do you have a mix of short and long stages and still do this? The only way I can think of to do this is to adjust all the stages to about the same size and level of complexity, and that pretty much limits you to what you can do in the smallest bay.

The best matches the MD's usually have their key players assigned to different squads to motivate, educate, and keep it moving. While some people hate this format because good shooters want to shoot with other good shooters, it is by far the quickest.

That is, in many ways, the single most difficult thing to accomplish. We try and balance the squads out but trying to break up or mix certain groups is guaranteed to create a huge problem. I don't want to offend anyone reading this, but shooters can be the biggest bunch of self-centered whiners I have ever seen!

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What do you need short stages for? This ins't IDPA (no offense)...people come to shoot field courses!

Seriously though.. if I want to run a speed/skills stage, I'll often double it up with another short cof or quick classifier.

I've run Majors where I've doubled or tripled up stages in a bay...to keep the squad flow even.

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Leaving a stage empty to start with can help keep things moving. Forget about long/short, easy /hard and just plan for length. Your match will be based on the longest time to shoot a stage.

We will make all squads 15 shooters and shoot 3 stages.

Stage 1 is 3 minutes a shooter. 45 minutes to shoot and 3 3/4 minutes waiting for squad 2 to finish their stage. (48.75 minutes)

Stage 2 is 3 1/4 minutes a shooter. 48.75 minutes to shoot, move into an empty bay.

Stage 3 is 2 1/2 minutes a shooter. 37.5 minutes to shoot and wait 7.5 minutes for squad 1 to finish their stage, and then another 3.75 minutes for squad 1 to finish stage 2. (48.75 minutes)

So how do you balance things out? Well that is a good question and hopefully others will chime in with other considerations. Some of mine:

How long for the average shooter to shoot the stage?

How long to score the stage?

How long to paste the stage?

How long to start the next shooter?

If the average time to shoot the stage is 45 seconds then you need to save time on the scoring and pasting side by making sure they are readily accessible. Fighting your way through props to get at the target will slow things down. Having arrays packed together so that only one person can paste them will slow things down.

Make the short/ fast courses more challenging. The average shooter can run the stage in 20 seconds so this is where you put the swingers and turners that need extra time to reset.

You do not need to make the Texas star or Polish plate rack easy to shoot, but it should be easy to reset. Paint the backs different colors on the PPR that match the holding hardware. That way it should always balance. Have extra weight and color coded paint on two plates for the star so that they are always on the bottom.

Do not put a TS or PPR on a long field course and partially hide it behind soft cover or hard cover and expect the stage to be shot quickly.

A long field course can have challenging shots but make sure that the targets are easy to access for scoring and pasting purposes. Having to return to inside the fault lines just to get around a wall adds up, leave openings so that you can easily go around the outside of the COF to score and paste.

Color code your parts. Blue end of prop stick goes to blue end of swinger, Orange end goes to orange base. Spend time up front demonstrating how to reset the device, or assign a couple of people as the authorized re-setters to reduce the chances of a REF.

Staple white/ black pasters to the target sticks with NS/HC targets.

Make the props easy to reset. Needing 20 seconds to carefully place all the pins/weights/levers needed to hold the door/window/activator in place is that much greater chance for it to fail.

The most difficult of all. Try to think of every possible way the stage can be gamed and either prevent it or plan for it with proper wording of the WSB or changes to the COF. Spending 10 to 15 minutes arguing over the legality of the action is time wasted.

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What do you need short stages for? This ins't IDPA (no offense)...people come to shoot field courses!

Seriously though.. if I want to run a speed/skills stage, I'll often double it up with another short cof or quick classifier.

I've run Majors where I've doubled or tripled up stages in a bay...to keep the squad flow even.

This is great advice. I run a fairly successful match down here in AL. I seldom have stages shorter than 24 rounds, and frequently (for the fun of it) with as many as 40 (this is level I & II). I have people that drive 3 hours one way to shoot, and because of that, I want then to have fun and SHOOT. I often tell folks, I have never heard of someone leaving a match and say "Geeze, I shot too much today", the opposite is true when you pay money to drive and enter a match that is a bunch of 10-12 round stages.

I try to make it so that the long stages do not have a lot to reset (Steel, swingers, etc)just paper. Make a 20 round stage with some steel or the mover, and the reset time will even it out with a longer stage. Classifiers - can't do much about the fact that most are short, but if you would run the multi-string ones, that would lengthen the per shooter time. If you have the space (and I don't) setup the classifier twice in the same bay (or run it twice on the same setup) - the first one is a "Stage" (practice), and the second one is the real "classifier".

Mark K

Edited by Mark K
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I understand your problem. We are now running 6 stages at our club, which will maybe include 2 quicker stages. I put the 2 fast stages on adjacent bays, say bays 3 and 4, then I have 5 squads starting on 1, 2, 3,5 and 6. Essentially combining Bays 3 and 4 into 1 time element. It seems to help.

Edited by mjl
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  • 2 weeks later...

Something that's helped speed things up at our monthlies is avoiding classifiers requiring more than one or two strings. We found that a 12-18 round 3 or 4 string classifier can take a squad twice as much time as a 32 round field course to complete.

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Specially if the multi-string stage can't be run with multiple shooters in parallel, or if the stage requires walking more than 25 yards to get to the targets, score them, tape them, and then get people back up range.

On thing that we've been doing for these longer distance multi-string stages, and specially if it is raining, is to have multiple targets made. A shooter shoots the classifier, Assistant RO goes downrange with a replacement set of targets. Grabs the targets, puts in replacements, and comes back to where it is dry. As soon as the range is clear, the next shooter is ready to shoot, and the targets can be scored more carefully. Yes, the travel up and down increases chances of tape falling off while the plastic raincoat is on and flapping in the breeze, but the ability to tape the target in a drier environment and having less time pressure to score and tape makes for better taping that chances of tape falling off are also decreased. This requires a lot of discipline though to ensure that targets are all made the same, target stands are staked down, and target stands are marked ensure consistent placement of the targets.

Why do we have so much experience with such stages? Apparently one of our local shooters here has his name attached to many stages in the classifier book. :lol:

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