Jump to content
Brian Enos's Forums... Maku mozo!

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


Recommended Posts

On 6/5/2022 at 8:51 PM, Artemas said:

Our MD's pay to shoot their own match.. so no.

 

That is a non starter for me. There is more that goes into being an MD than just setting up stages and tearing them down. 

Here, MD, Stats, Set up help, RO's all shoot for free. Jr's are 5 bucks. I buy what we need within reason from each match proceeds. Sometimes the club's proceeds are $$$$$ and sometimes $. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 50
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

47 minutes ago, motosapiens said:

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.

Ah. Misunderstood. You said “some

clubs”. Thought you were referring to your club. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

38 minutes ago, Sarge said:

That is a non starter for me. There is more that goes into being an MD than just setting up stages and tearing them down. 

Here, MD, Stats, Set up help, RO's all shoot for free. Jr's are 5 bucks. I buy what we need within reason from each match proceeds. Sometimes the club's proceeds are $$$$$ and sometimes $. 

Our uspsa club is a separate entity from our range. A few is paid per shooter to the range for non-member competitors. 
 

Everyone is expected to be help tear down. But all setup.. MD, RM, stats, etc shoots free. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/4/2022 at 8:28 PM, 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? 

 

Easy if your MD has their crap together and have a proper board.  We do the same thing in about an hour and half.  The key is to have invested board members in the club to where each board member has responsibility for the stage they design and build.  The board member is responsible for the stage and directs the shooters who volunteer to help the morning of the match.

 

Review of the stages on paper by the MD days before the match occurs helps vet the stage before its even built. 

 

We have two storage areas we pull from.  A prop barn and a barrel Conex.  I would say the average distance is about 75 yds to each bay.  We have one small trailer that is used to deliver props to each bay first thing in the morning that the MD usually drives, then the MD may setup the Classifier if we are short a board member.  Otherwise he is taking care of all of the other aspects of the setup.  Stats, delivering targets, first aid boxes, Stage boxes etc.  Then he performs a final walk through.  

 

If a MD tried to do that with volunteer help from shooters only, it could not happen.

Edited by Boomstick303
Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, Dirty_J said:

Ah. Misunderstood. You said “some

clubs”. Thought you were referring to your club. 

? I am referring to my club, but maybe you got my comment mixed up with shred's or something.

 

to summarize the content of multiple posts in this thread, we (nampa rod and gun club) set up high-quality stages the morning of the match, in 90 mins or less (usually 60-75 mins), using separate stage designer/builders for each of 4 field stages, and 2 atv's with trailers to help in transporting walls and steel and movers and so forth. We advertise that setup starts at 8:30 and we just shoot when we are done with setup. (typically 9:30-9:45). we typically get 40-70 shooters, charge $15 for non-members, 12 for range members, and 4 for MD and stage designers (to cover the uspsa activity fees). The USPSA discipline is a subactivity of the range itself, so all money beyond the activity fees goes directly to the club and we submit budget requests for expenses.

 

The other two uspsa clubs in our area also set up the morning of the match.

Edited by motosapiens
Link to comment
Share on other sites

We do half off for Thursday evening setup before our Saturday match, and half off for hauling things back to the prop shed after the match. (Competitors tear down their last stages to the front of the bay, but geography means our prop shed is a long way from our bays, and we only have the one Gator to unload stuff.)

 

We're a relatively small club without a lot of props, so we typically have 2 biggish field courses, 1-2 short/medium courses, and 1-2 speed shoots/classifiers. Setup is usually between 5 and 10 people, and we almost never take more than two hours to get everything laid down. Sometimes even less—May was our most complicated match in a while, in terms of prop count, and we were done in about an hour and fifteen minutes once the full crew showed up.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Years ago a range near here got some old riding lawnmowers with bad decks for scrap value, junked the mower parts and used them to tow homebrew mini-trailers for walls and props.  Worked pretty well for not a lot of investment.  IIRC they parked the trailers under a pull-through canopy.

 

APSC (my home range) has a 'trailer park' where the outdoor-capable props, target stands and sticks stay on the stage trailers until the next match while the movers and targets and such such get stored in an enclosed trailer or shed.  Being Texas, there's usually enough people around with trucks and tow-capable SUVs to pull the trailers over to the bays.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

North Texas Practical Shooters once had a trailer that held all of our walls, target stands, etc.  All the squads had to do was tear down and place the things at the entrance to the bay.  Then some dirt bag stole the trailer and everything on it.........it was quite a set back for the club.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, shred said:

Years ago a range near here got some old riding lawnmowers with bad decks for scrap value, junked the mower parts and used them to tow homebrew mini-trailers for walls and props.  Worked pretty well for not a lot of investment.  IIRC they parked the trailers under a pull-through canopy.

 

APSC (my home range) has a 'trailer park' where the outdoor-capable props, target stands and sticks stay on the stage trailers until the next match while the movers and targets and such such get stored in an enclosed trailer or shed.  Being Texas, there's usually enough people around with trucks and tow-capable SUVs to pull the trailers over to the bays.

The old riding mowers towing home brewed trailers sounds so redneck and I absolutely love it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/4/2022 at 8:17 AM, 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. 

Yeah this club recently raised the match fee to $35, which is way higher than any other I’ve seen. And match quality sucks cause they will only discount your fee, not fully comp. We still have volunteers but it’s not enough. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/4/2022 at 8:17 AM, 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. 

Yeah this club recently raised the match fee to $35, which is way higher than any other I’ve seen. And match quality sucks cause they will only discount your fee, not fully comp. We still have volunteers but it’s not enough. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Triggerslapper999 said:

Yeah this club recently raised the match fee to $35

 

I imagine that there comes a dollar amount that would make people treat the event as a transaction.  $35 seems like they are there or are close to that dollar amount to where shooters will act 100% like a consumer.  A consumer has no vested interest in helping out the match staff with anything when paying a lot to attend an event.  

 

At least that is the way it seems to me.

Edited by Boomstick303
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Boomstick303 said:

 

I imagine that there comes a dollar amount that would make people treat the event as a transaction.  $35 seems like they are there or are close to that dollar amount to where shooters will act 100% like a consumer.  A consumer has no vetted interest in helping out the match staff with anything when paying a lot to attend an event.  

 

At least that is the way it seems to me.

Yeah at that price, if it's a standard local match (5 stages + classifier), I am inclined to view it as show up, shoot, go home vs show up, help where needed, shoot, tear down, home.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Boomstick303 said:

 

I imagine that there comes a dollar amount that would make people treat the event as a transaction.  $35 seems like they are there or are close to that dollar amount to where shooters will act 100% like a consumer.  A consumer has no vetted interest in helping out the match staff with anything when paying a lot to attend an event.  

 

At least that is the way it seems to me.

100% agree. 
 

A $20/ 5-6 stage match is absolutely a volunteer type event. You go past $30…

you better have some dedicated range staff to put your **** away. 🤣

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Dirty_J said:

you better have some dedicated range staff to put your **** away. 🤣

 

I wonder if there isn't a market for that kind of thing.

 

Picture a 6-stage match with 40 shooters, but $50 instead of $20—so you're grossing $2000 instead of $800. Put $1000 toward staff, and at $50 per slot, you can afford eight setup guys, plus two ROs per stage. (Stick the other $200 into a prop fund, or pay $60 per staff slot instead of $50.) Shooters paste and stack props at the front of the bay when they finish their last stage, and that's all that's expected of them. No second gun to help keep time commitments down. Set up on a Saturday afternoon/evening, and you can run a staff shoot in advance of a Sunday match, and staff shoots free on that day.

 

From the MD perspective, I could ask more of a setup crew I'm paying, which means higher-effort stages, which is tempting for shooters and helps justify the higher price.

 

From the staff perspective, doing something I'd be inclined to do anyway (set up, run tablet/timer), but also getting the match totally free and making $50-$100 on top, seems like a pretty good deal for a local match.

 

From the competitor perspective, I don't know if I'd be willing to pay $50 for a local given the presence of $20 locals, but then again, I'm also a cheapskate, and other people might weigh the benefits of dedicated ROs and setup/teardown crew, plus potentially better stages, differently.

 

Academic for me, since there's a lot of inertia behind our current schedule at my club and it works well for me, but interesting to think about.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

With the price of gas now a $50.00 match fee would all I’d need to stay home. I usually travel about 2 hours to a match and with cost of gas now with match fee ammo, that’s around $100.00 if not more. I tried to get a club that I shoot at to do that once , I was told NO. I had two guys and we told them they would never have to worry about set up again, still no

Link to comment
Share on other sites

People try higher fees paid setup/teardown for locals periodically here but they usually don't last more than a year or two... generally the cheap setup help gets tired of doing it and there's enough volunteer-priced matches around.

 

 

.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/4/2022 at 9:28 PM, 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

called planning and a hair of leadership

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 been running matches sense you were pooping yellow.  RO, CRO, at one time.
Big matches, area matches,  club matches, multiple states, multiple range layouts. and with planning, prop list and like I said a bit of leadership, can set up a great 8 stage match in a couple hours. and not waste your helps time... Sorry if your pea brain cant grasp that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

fact. lots of folks put on great matches with a handful of help .
Good MD, have good  stage diagrams, including a prop/ target list posted on each stage,, folks that show up can look at this and start helping... MD just needs to tweek the stages.
BAd MD's, play one guy itis,, hord the info, help stands around, MD runs around,,, help eventually stops showing up cause they dont like time wasted,,,, MD complains about no help,,   non help prima dona shoot and scoots thinks it takes all day to set up a match

 

Edited by Joe4d
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



×
×
  • Create New...