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Does your club cover your match fees for set up help?


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Some of our local ranges comp your match fees if you help with set up. Quality of matches are always great.

 

1 club in particular will only discount your match fee if you help, even while charging a much higher than average fee. Match quality (stage design, stage set up execution) is poor. 

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I manage registration for two clubs in the Columbia Cascade Section (Portland, OR area)   We comp match fees if you come a day early to help pull props, design a stage, help with lunch runs, help with building props, etc.  If you put in help above and beyond the normal day-of-match* work you get a free match. 

 

* We expect everyone to help with normal day-of-match (finishing setup, helping during the match, and tear-down)

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We comp match fees for anyone who helps with setup (we set up the day before). If you help morning of (hanging targets, painting steel, last minute touches) you get first dibs on squadding. Everybody helps with teardown after the match.

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most of my local clubs comp match fees for those that come the day before and help setup (or morning of match setup at some clubs).   

 

frankly, schlepping out and back the day before to setup (auto wear and tear + FUEL costs) plus the couple hours setting up ain't worth a comp'd match fee in most instances, so we all should be super appreciative of those who do that because they're essentially volunteering!!!

 

one local club won't open general practiscore registration until X number have signed up for setup.  i think that's a good idea and keeps match staff/mgmt from getting stuck with all the work.

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My club sets up the weekend before the match. So they just have to put out steel and hang cardboard the morning of the match. 
 

Match fees are comp’d for all setup crew. 

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4 hours ago, Nathanb said:

I wanted to do this but the club was against it. Which led to my set up guys burning out and then me burning out and no more matches. 

they were against comping match fees for setup crew?  now it looks like they even have less revenue...

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18 minutes ago, davsco said:

they were against comping match fees for setup crew?  now it looks like they even have less revenue...

You nailed it. The expectation of people giving up a day to set up is too much. Especially when you need 5-6 hours to set up and tweak and tune. When I approach this there were a small minority who were making an absolute ruckus about this as no one else got to shoot for free so everyone should either pay or shoot.  I chose not to play into it and now have more time of my own to shoot instead of playing the md 

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7 hours ago, Nathanb said:

You nailed it. The expectation of people giving up a day to set up is too much. Especially when you need 5-6 hours to set up and tweak and tune. 

5-6 hrs is insane . we setup 6-7 stages in 1 hour right before the match. stage designer leads pay only the uspsa activity fees. everyone else helps and pays $15.

 

imho the best way to burn people out is to do setup the previous day. i wouldn’t be able to do that, but i can easily commit to showing up early on match day.

Edited by motosapiens
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26 minutes ago, motosapiens said:

5-6 hrs is insane . we setup 6-7 stages in 1 hour right before the match. stage designer leads pay only the uspsa activity fees. everyone else helps and pays $15.

 

imho the best way to burn people out is to do setup the previous day. i wouldn’t be able to do that, but i can easily commit to showing up early on match day.

How the **** can you pull out walls, props, target stands and the like AND setup and debug 6-7 stages in an hour? 
 

y’all just do box to box stages or what? Lol

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8 minutes ago, Dirty_J said:

How the **** can you pull out walls, props, target stands and the like AND setup and debug 6-7 stages in an hour? 
 

y’all just do box to box stages or what? Lol

Must be. There is a club I used to go to that set up morning of match. Sometimes 11:30 or later before we shot. No thanks

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30 minutes ago, Dirty_J said:

How the **** can you pull out walls, props, target stands and the like AND setup and debug 6-7 stages in an hour? 
 

y’all just do box to box stages or what? Lol

we work efficiently and we’re not retards, thats how.

 

we have 4 teams of people that each pull out walls, props, target stands and the like, and set up and debug an individual field course stage in an hour. then we add 2 shorter stages (classifiers or speed shoot). I cheat and get there 90 minutes early when I am building a stage so I have time to finish it and then do a quick walk-through on the other stages.

 

I will leave it to other shooting consumers to hear their opinion on whether our stages are good or bad, but we have people that come from several neighboring states on a regular basis to shoot our matches. we also have a large number of Ms and GM’s and at least three or four top 30 finishers in nationals that shoot regularly at our club. mostly we have a culture of participation, fostered by our previous discipline director (now a rangemaster instructor). many hands make light work.

Edited by motosapiens
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10 hours ago, motosapiens said:

5-6 hrs is insane . we setup 6-7 stages in 1 hour right before the match. stage designer leads pay only the uspsa activity fees. everyone else helps and pays $15.

 

imho the best way to burn people out is to do setup the previous day. i wouldn’t be able to do that, but i can easily commit to showing up early on match day.

I didn’t have enough commitment to do it in a single day and no matter how many times I went through stage specifics no one really grasped it. There was no guarantee what was on paper would even be close to on the ground. I’m talking about steel at five yards and all shots from one view even if that wasn’t on paper

 

i was also the only one who would design stages. I couldn’t get any traction on even a stage concept because it’s really hard according to them. 

 

I think it’s just safe to say that my club wasn’t a good fit for supporting uspsa. Lol
 

 

 

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10 hours ago, Nathanb said:

I didn’t have enough commitment to do it in a single day and no matter how many times I went through stage specifics no one really grasped it. There was no guarantee what was on paper would even be close to on the ground. I’m talking about steel at five yards and all shots from one view even if that wasn’t on paper

 

i was also the only one who would design stages. I couldn’t get any traction on even a stage concept because it’s really hard according to them. 

 

I think it’s just safe to say that my club wasn’t a good fit for supporting uspsa. Lol
 

 

 

yeah, that's a tough situation. It is much more difficult and time-consuming imho to build someone else's stage from a diagram. Mrs moto and I can slam up our stage pretty quick because we know how it's supposed to look. I am fortunate to shoot at a club with 20+ certified RO's, an RMI, 15 or more M's and half a dozen or more GM's. But it wasn't always that way. 10 years ago high overall at some of our matches was a c class singlestack shooter.

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20 hours ago, Dirty_J said:

How the **** can you pull out walls, props, target stands and the like AND setup and debug 6-7 stages in an hour? 
 

y’all just do box to box stages or what? Lol

Just to revisit this topic, we just finished Area 1 at our range in Nampa Idaho. 400 shooters, 14 stages over 4 total days. Scores posted at 12:16, by 4:40 we had done the full protest period, awards, prize table, complete tear-down of the match and putting everything away, a raffle for the teardown volunteers where everyone got something (i got a ruger revolver), and driven home to feed the dogs and open a beer. 

 

Many hands make light work.

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1 hour ago, motosapiens said:

yeah, that's a tough situation. It is much more difficult and time-consuming imho to build someone else's stage from a diagram. Mrs moto and I can slam up our stage pretty quick because we know how it's supposed to look. I am fortunate to shoot at a club with 20+ certified RO's, an RMI, 15 or more M's and half a dozen or more GM's. But it wasn't always that way. 10 years ago high overall at some of our matches was a c class singlestack shooter.

Agreed I didn’t have the support. And as much as it pained me to watch it go away I feel like my mental health has benefited from it.  It’s nice to show up and help out then leave when it’s done and not have to worry about getting the next one ready. 

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14 hours ago, motosapiens said:

Just to revisit this topic, we just finished Area 1 at our range in Nampa Idaho. 400 shooters, 14 stages over 4 total days. Scores posted at 12:16, by 4:40 we had done the full protest period, awards, prize table, complete tear-down of the match and putting everything away, a raffle for the teardown volunteers where everyone got something (i got a ruger revolver), and driven home to feed the dogs and open a beer. 

 

Many hands make light work.

 

If I ever leave the south I may have to look at settling up there just for the USPSA efficiency...

 

At my club I design all the stages, and typically have 2-3 people help me build them the day before. We are pretty efficient though, we can put a 140 round match on the ground in around 3-4 hours. Less if I come out on Friday after work to set a few things up.

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The clubs around here have been setting up match day for as long as I've been shooting, and that's the early 1990s.

 

They rent bays from the ranges and only have them for a day.

 

So the clubs got more efficient-- prop trailers for every bay and do everything in parallel.  Each bay has a stage director whose job it is to get just that one stage on the ground.  You can get a match of good stages set up in an hour and a half plus or minus with SDs and random volunteer labor.

 

Sometimes I'll set up a stage the afternoon before just because I like sleeping in if I SD, but few others bother.

 

 

 

 

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41 minutes ago, shred said:

The clubs around here have been setting up match day for as long as I've been shooting, and that's the early 1990s.

 

They rent bays from the ranges and only have them for a day.

 

So the clubs got more efficient-- prop trailers for every bay and do everything in parallel.  Each bay has a stage director whose job it is to get just that one stage on the ground.  You can get a match of good stages set up in an hour and a half plus or minus with SDs and random volunteer labor.

 

Sometimes I'll set up a stage the afternoon before just because I like sleeping in if I SD, but few others bother.

 

 

 

 

Oh. Yeah. If you’ve got a connex or shed on each bay that tremendously speeds things up. Haha. 
 

We just have a storage box on the bays to keep steel, wall stands and target stands. Everything else is located in/by connexs located 100yds away. 

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2 hours ago, Dirty_J said:

We just have a storage box on the bays to keep steel, wall stands and target stands. Everything else is located in/by connexs located 100yds away. 

South River?

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12 hours ago, Dirty_J said:

Oh. Yeah. If you’ve got a connex or shed on each bay that tremendously speeds things up. Haha. 
 

We just have a storage box on the bays to keep steel, wall stands and target stands. Everything else is located in/by connexs located 100yds away. 

we have nothing stored on the bays. everything comes from a central big connex and shed. but we do have 2 atv's with trailers that speed the distribution. Mostly the speed comes from just doing things in parallel, as shred mentions. it's pretty easy to get volunteer help for 30 minutes right before a match. it's a much bigger challenge to get someone to drive out on a separate day and spend half a day or more. We no longer even advertise when the match starts. we just advertise what time setup starts (with shooting to follow immediately after). It seems like since we started doing that, more people show up early, and we finish setup and start shooting earlier than we used to.

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