Texas State Open Championship 2013

[Flatland Shooter]

Looks like fun - must say this is the first match I've ever shot where the shooting area is ON TOP OF A LAKE!!!!

Bring your bug spray...

Staff and ROs shot today. No bug spray needed but I really should have put on some sun block.

Bill

[38SuperDub]

Great day today!!! Lets hope the weather man is nice to us tomorrow!!!

[nocab]

Any ROs on here that can give an update? Range looks like a swamp!

[38SuperDub]

It was a swamp today!

[CHA-LEE]

Fun match!!!

[GlennRasch]

Have 2 more stages to take down.... YES it was a swamp, we did the best we could with what we had to work with. I think everybody had a wet but fun shoot this weekend ..... thanks to all the staff and shooters for making this years TX Open a hit... :-D

Edited March 11, 2013 by GlennRasch

[BR ENV Shooter]

Excellent match and a great staff. Thank you for the match. I also want to give a big huge thank you to BJ Norris for not help tape it paint and for having the slowest squad. Without him we all would have gotten out of there quicker.

At the request from one of his squad members, I wish to removed the label from the squad. Thank you Jerome for setting me striaght and opening my eyes to what I didn't see.

Edited March 11, 2013 by BR ENV Shooter

[TerryO]

Great match again. Thanks to all the RO's and Staff that made it happen.

[M118LR]

What a match. Our squad was lucky that we were able to shoot the whole match in one day. Today it rain and when I went out to the range today I was glad that we had finished. A big THANK YOU to Alex, his range staff and all the RO's. They worked there tails off all day and also in the rain and mud today.

Here is a video of the match winner. I am sure you know who it is.

More later.

[Jerome]

I'd also like to thank all the RO's at the match. It was a ROing under some pretty tough conditions. The wind constantly blowing downing props, paper targets and poppers and re shoots. We heard many stop commands throughout the stages. Scoring targets was especially difficult in the mud and muck on Sunday. Some of you guys looked pretty haggard and worn out at the end of it all. Just wanted to say thanks for an excellent job.

[Jerome]

Max makes it look so easy.

What a match. Our squad was lucky that we were able to shoot the whole match in one day. Today it rain and when I went out to the range today I was glad that we had finished. A big THANK YOU to Alex, his range staff and all the RO's. They worked there tails off all day and also in the rain and mud today.

Here is a video of the match winner. I am sure you know who it is.

More later.

[BR ENV Shooter]

The wind on Saturday was the Range Officers' worst enemy.

[B.J. Norris]

Excellent match and a great staff. Thank you for the match. I also want to give a big huge thank you to BJ Norris for not help tape it paint and for having the slowest squad. Without him we all would have gotten out of there quicker.

At the request from one of his squad members, I wish to removed the label from the squad. Thank you Jerome for setting me striaght and opening my eyes to what I didn't see.

Keith,

While I do realize that my squad ran slower than most of the match, there are several factors that influenced this and I do not appreciate the personal attack against me and my students.

All of my squad showed up to shoot the match. I believe your squad had 10 people on the ground and had 3-4 no-shows. That fact is totally out of my control, and I could not have predicted it. Alex told me that the match was full at 12 person squads with a huge waiting list, and he was pushing them up to 14, and asked if I could run 14 in my class, I agreed. Because the students had more than just a match fee invested, they made sure to be there.

After we shot stage 1, we waited every single stage. You said it yourself, the wind was the worst enemy on Saturday. I can't speak to the reason why things were not spiked down better, but they weren't. We had approximately 15-20 reshoots on Saturday due to range equipment failure, 2 on the first stage alone. Again, these things are totally out of our control. For instance, when we got to stage 3, the previous squad had one shooter trying to re-shoot so many times, with so many problems that we had time to walk down, get lunch,come back and get half of lunch eaten before she was done. The barrels were continually being blown over until Arthur and Alex brought over some lathe and weights to hold them down. When the Rangemaster shuts the stage down for repairs, the squad may not protest it. On stage 4, the squad ahead of us was nowhere near finished when we got there due to the REF on the plates. The caps that the plates were mounted on were loose on the 2x4 stands, therefore any strike on the cap would knock the plate over. As I remember, I was the one digging old banding material out of the berm to try and shim the stands up. We also ran out of pasters on the stage, which makes it hard for more than 2 people to go paste.

To address your personal attack against me for not helping tape, paint, etc. With plenty of people in my squad, I tried to stay back and coach the students as best I could while other people helped reset. To this end, I volunteered to go first on every stage, so nobody had to actually shoot first, and so I could be finished and focus on them. I believe your group also asked me several questions about the best way to shoot a stage. My goal was my students and making sure they had a good experience. As the day went on, it became a more and more difficult event for people to make it through and perform well. You look at my results that and realize that I was not there to shoot an awesome match.

I'm sorry that ya'll had to wait so long, I really am, because I've been there, and I know it seriously sucks. However, it was a variety of factors that we couldn't control that made the problem as bad as it ended up being.

[JorDanO]

It was a fun match, the stages were great and I appreciate the hard work of everyone who worked to put it on. A good way to start the year off.

There appears to be a major scoring discrepancy however, Kale's Stage 5 score is missing which would totally change the outcome of the Production final standings.

[38SuperDub]

Anxious to see video of the Stock 3 doing its thing - cmon Jordan!!!!

Goot shooting also BTW!

[CocoBolo]

Excellent match and a great staff. Thank you for the match. I also want to give a big huge thank you to BJ Norris for not help tape it paint and for having the slowest squad. Without him we all would have gotten out of there quicker.

At the request from one of his squad members, I wish to removed the label from the squad. Thank you Jerome for setting me striaght and opening my eyes to what I didn't see.

Keith,

To address your personal attack against me for not helping tape, paint, etc. With plenty of people in my squad, I tried to stay back and coach the students as best I could while other people helped reset. To this end, I volunteered to go first on every stage, so nobody had to actually shoot first, and so I could be finished and focus on them. I believe your group also asked me several questions about the best way to shoot a stage. My goal was my students and making sure they had a good experience. As the day went on, it became a more and more difficult event for people to make it through and perform well. You look at my results that and realize that I was not there to shoot an awesome match.

Dear Charter Member of Me First Club

Ok, for the record after stage 3 our 4th of the day Bj didn't have to tape and we only had 14 on the Squad after I DQ'ed. I taped every round because I didn't have to get ready or load mags etc, but he did do a fair amount of taping and setting. We were already waiting after our first stage 12 and at each stage the wait got longer, waiting on 4 was ridiciulos, however, my friend RO Steve Lauff told me when we got there an hour early and to come back at 2 pm, to which I told him there is no way to do 12 stages and stick to the schedule. The rest of the day we had the last hole taped within a few seconds of the RO calling the hit, we just had to wait on them to get outa the way. We had a shooting order and shooters were ready. We weren't wasting time.

By the way I'm not bitter about DQ'ing myself, but part of that was rushing to keep it moving along, under normal circumstance I would have taken the time to check my holster when it didn't feel just right. But you got people waiting, me firsters, and the wind blowing the ball off etc, none the less totally my fault.

If you were thinking that squad 12 was just a bunch of lazy no goods not taping and setting you should have got off the big end grabbed some pasters and showed by example how its done.

[Bunchies95]

It was a good match and not just because I finished so well (though that helps a lot). The stages looked a lot better on the ground than in the match book. They were more shooting challenges than stage break down though.

With any club trying to run a major match for the first time, there are going to be some issues. I think they did a decent job of trying to minimize the impact of things and are going to take the lessons learned to make next year much better. I hope next year isn't as windy or pouring rain.

[38SuperDub]

I think Alex needs to rent one of those bio dome things so that we don't have to deal with 35 mph wind on day 1 (sure I'm exaggerating it was just 20mph) and the monsoon on the 2nd day!!!

Am I the only one thats sunburnt?!?

[Bunchies95]

There appears to be a major scoring discrepancy however, Kale's Stage 5 score is missing which would totally change the outcome of the Production final standings.

I'm glad your squad got to shoot the entire match on Saturday and be able to leave, but unfortunately it's still up to the shooter to check the scores. I didn't even notice he had a missing stage when I checked the scores. I usually look at the HHF and then see where I compared.

The impact on the top 3 would have been huge. He definately would have won the match as there is no way he would have gotten less than 30 points on that stage. That sucks big time. But the impact on the rest of the division would be minimal. Assuming he won the stage, I don't think he would have had a much higher HF than Jim.

My squad had a lot of issues where the RO put the score down on some elses name (usually one of the no shows). We managed to catch quite a few of those when the scores were posted Saturday night. I looked though stage 5 and it doesn't appear that Kales score got put on anybody elses. Everybody had a reasonable HF for their classification, so I think it just didn't get saved.

[beltjones]

Excellent match and a great staff. Thank you for the match. I also want to give a big huge thank you to BJ Norris for not help tape it paint and for having the slowest squad. Without him we all would have gotten out of there quicker.

At the request from one of his squad members, I wish to removed the label from the squad. Thank you Jerome for setting me striaght and opening my eyes to what I didn't see.

Keith,

To address your personal attack against me for not helping tape, paint, etc. With plenty of people in my squad, I tried to stay back and coach the students as best I could while other people helped reset. To this end, I volunteered to go first on every stage, so nobody had to actually shoot first, and so I could be finished and focus on them. I believe your group also asked me several questions about the best way to shoot a stage. My goal was my students and making sure they had a good experience. As the day went on, it became a more and more difficult event for people to make it through and perform well. You look at my results that and realize that I was not there to shoot an awesome match.

Dear Charter Member of Me First Club

Ok, for the record after stage 3 our 4th of the day Bj didn't have to tape and we only had 14 on the Squad after I DQ'ed. I taped every round because I didn't have to get ready or load mags etc, but he did do a fair amount of taping and setting. We were already waiting after our first stage 12 and at each stage the wait got longer, waiting on 4 was ridiciulos, however, my friend RO Steve Lauff told me when we got there an hour early and to come back at 2 pm, to which I told him there is no way to do 12 stages and stick to the schedule. The rest of the day we had the last hole taped within a few seconds of the RO calling the hit, we just had to wait on them to get outa the way. We had a shooting order and shooters were ready. We weren't wasting time.

By the way I'm not bitter about DQ'ing myself, but part of that was rushing to keep it moving along, under normal circumstance I would have taken the time to check my holster when it didn't feel just right. But you got people waiting, me firsters, and the wind blowing the ball off etc, none the less totally my fault.

If you were thinking that squad 12 was just a bunch of lazy no goods not taping and setting you should have got off the big end grabbed some pasters and showed by example how its done.

Ron - it was good to meet you. You were a show of class when you DQed, sticking around to help paint and reset and not making a big deal out of it. You even came back the next day to help paint and tape in the rain! Nice job. BTW, why the heck isn't your forum handle ironman? Everyone likes puns!

Anyway, the match was great fun, the stages were excellent, and the ROs were professional and helpful. You really can't ask for anything more than that.

To respond to what has been written above, it's just frustrating being behind a slow squad. There isn't a good way in this sport to get around it like there is in golf, where you can just play through. Somehow they were able to expedite certain squads (the super squad finished all 12 stages - wow!), but the rest of us had to make do, and even shoot in the mud and slop the second day.

Yes, some squads are slower than others, and it didn't help that our squad had 10 people and BJ's had 14. I know for a fact that many people on BJ's squad worked really hard to keep the squad moving, (see my comment about Cocobolo above). However, if, as BJ says, he was able to tell people on our squad how he shot stages, well, it's hard to have that conversation if you're busy taping and coaching.

I really hope the same club puts on this match again next year. They did a fantastic job throughout, with a great mix of tough shots (mini-poppers at 17ish yards in front of no-shoots!), hoser stages (which are extremely difficult in their own right), and with a fun short course thrown in for good measure. I'll be back for sure!

[Flatland Shooter]

It was a fun match, the stages were great and I appreciate the hard work of everyone who worked to put it on. A good way to start the year off.

There appears to be a major scoring discrepancy however, Kale's Stage 5 score is missing which would totally change the outcome of the Production final standings.

Did Kale get a chance to review the posted stage scores at the range? Was it there at that time?

I neglected to do check mine and I have no score for Stage 9. But in my case, it was a lost cause.

Bill

[Flatland Shooter]

I think Alex needs to rent one of those bio dome things so that we don't have to deal with 35 mph wind on day 1 (sure I'm exaggerating it was just 20mph) and the monsoon on the 2nd day!!!

Am I the only one thats sunburnt?!?

And who would be the first shooter to put a hole in the dome?

And I'm a level or two past sunburnt.

[CHA-LEE]

There can always be things that can be improved. We can focus on the "Issues" with the match or we can focus on the "Success". I thought that the match staff did a great job of handling the issues as they came up and did their best to minimize the impact of the issues. For example, I was impressed at how they were able to get sand put into the muddy shooting area's on Sunday. The match was fun and challenging. When mother nature shows up and causes trouble (Wind and Rain) all people can do is deal with it the best they can.

[Bunchies95]

There can always be things that can be improved. We can focus on the "Issues" with the match or we can focus on the "Success".

This is a great point. Huge upside: Last shot were fired around noonish, scores were posted within minutes for review, prize table and awards done and we were out of there by 3:30!

[38SuperDub]

It was a fun match, the stages were great and I appreciate the hard work of everyone who worked to put it on. A good way to start the year off.

There appears to be a major scoring discrepancy however, Kale's Stage 5 score is missing which would totally change the outcome of the Production final standings.

Did Kale get a chance to review the posted stage scores at the range? Was it there at that time?

I neglected to do check mine and I have no score for Stage 9. But in my case, it was a lost cause.

Bill

Don't hold me to this but I didn't see Kale on Sunday. I assume they left after they finished on Saturday vs stay for the mud.