Does having to prepay for a club match help

[Nathanb]

I think 12 is the sweet spot 14 is my max 

[rowdyb]

Saves me forgetting one more thing match morning and one less step at the range pre match. I love pre pay.

[Joe4d]

5 hours ago, IHAVEGAS said:

 

1 - S.O. , 1 - Score keeper , 1 On deck , 1 reloading , 4 potentially resetting

 

8 is ok if you have 8 healthy and fairly young people and the feels like temperature is not in the 90+++ range. 

 

I like 10-12. 

you left out the shooter, and also at least one other SO. to SO the SO,,, lol
thats ur 10,,, dang I hear people talking about 20 man squads . In 3 gun at that... dang thats got to be for a long long boring day. Pretty much why I quit USPSA,, high standaround to shoot ratio.

[Darqusoull13]

Requiring payment solved several issues we were having. Generally it does also simplify the process at check in if you are getting a larger number of shooters. We allowed a 48 hour window for withdrawing with a $5 fee for admin. 

Matches were filling and we were having to scramble the morning of to balance walk ups and wait lists with no shows. Some shooters would sign up and never show up. One was asinine enough to sign up for 3 matches on the same day to hold his spot. For a while we were taking too long because squads became too large. We try to keep squads at 10 shooters per squad and no more than 12 which is what we have found to be optimal for resetting efficiency. 

Does every club need it? Probably not. There's other ways to handle no shows but this worked for us. 
 

[shred]

For the pre-pay clubs how does it work if the match cancels?  Refunds?  Free re-entries?  Anybody ever rage-quit and do a chargeback?

 

[rowdyb]

35 minutes ago, shred said:

For the pre-pay clubs how does it work if the match cancels?  Refunds?  Free re-entries?  Anybody ever rage-quit and do a chargeback?

 

Area 59 rolls you over into being paid for the match next month if they cancel for weather or whatever. If I'm unable to attend the next match I ask for a refund and they do it. I have asked about contested charges and they say if the person shoots and does that they no longer allow them at the match. I've also seen them roll over a match fee for a new shooter who DQ-ed early on at a match.

 

I have also been the asinine person (not often but I've done it and normally they are separated by like 2-3 hours of driving time between them) who has registered for multiple matches on the same day while I wait to decide which one I'll shoot. I wouldn't do this if I had to pay for each one when I registered. If the match is a Saturday I choose by Friday morning and withdraw and such that morning at the latest.

 

As to squad size, you've got a 1.RO 2. scorekeeper 3. shooter 4. person who just shot 5. person on deck. Not the person in the hole. So 5 people are reasonably occupied at all times. That leaves 5 people on a 10 person squad to do stuff if people are good about it. 10-12 seems to be the magic number. Buttttt if you have 90 people at your match and 6 stages then that obviously is gonna be 15 per squad.  To small of squads people get tired. To big of squads and people hide and do less.

What do they have in common? They're all a people problem, not a match or tablet or md or stage problem.

Edited August 15, 2019 by rowdyb

[StealthyBlagga]

36 minutes ago, shred said:

For the pre-pay clubs how does it work if the match cancels?  Refunds?  Free re-entries?  Anybody ever rage-quit and do a chargeback?

 

 

We haven't cancelled a match yet - we live in a desert paradise  . If we had to cancel, we'd just refund everyone and eat the fees. We've never had a charge-back in our monthly match, but we did have a guy do it at one of our major matches so he could get his money back after the refund deadline... a dick move that has him perma-banned from any of our matches in perpetuity.