Tips For Running A Big Match

[John Heiter]

Our local club had some really good leadership who had been running things for several years but those guys basically got a little burned out and, at the last election, they stepped down. Now we have new leadership who have a lot of energy and the desire to do great things but we lack in practical experience. We're making good progress with the club level matches but we will be putting on a Section Championship match in October and could use all the advice we can get.

Those of you who have put on a big match, what things would you do differently, what things would you do again? Any advice on how to run a really good match would be most appreciated.

Thanks,

John

[Shooter Grrl]

The most important thing you can do is be consistent.

Consistent RO's, consistent rulings, consistent scoring.

The consistency, plus following USPSA rules, to the letter... will generate a really good match!

[Nolan]

If your old leadership had experience putting on sucessful major matches recruit them in an advisory role early in the planning stages. Buy them dinner, a few beers and have them proofread your plans. Don't expect them to be too enthusiastic, but free steak (forget pizza) is a good bribe. Then have them critique your preparations periodically.

Second, make sure your current leadership can delegate. Nothing creates a bottleneck like a dedicated well meaning person who insists on doing everything personally.

Third is options. Make sure you have choices for everything. Do not depend on a single source for anything. Line up multiple suppliers for everything. targets, tape, lumber, portapotties, etc...

Fourth is scheduling. It ALWAYS takes more time than you think. Weather forecasts are made by witchdoctors, supply deliveries are hostage negotiations, squads moving through stages make women getting ready for a date look positively lightening fast, RO schedules are like the California budget. If everything goes to plan and you finish early, great! Everybody is happy, go to the bar and enjoy it, because it won't happen again! If the bovine fertilizer hits the air circulator and you've properly doubled your fudge factor you'll finish pretty close to schedule. Great! Everybody is happy, go to the bar and enjoy! Otherwise get ready to enjoy shooting that last stage with the last squad using the headlights of half a dozen cars.

Fifth and not least. Great matches are remembered not for the range amenities, the snack bar or the prize tables, but for the courses of fire and as ShooterGrrl said the officiating. Design and build FUN challenging stages with spectator appeal. Challenging is not 6 inch ports 12 inches off the ground, fun is not memory tests, challenging is not 180 traps, fun is not all wide open targets within 10 feet, challenging is not a dozen 6 inch steel plates at 35 yards! Fun is not ROs who greet you with "Stand by to load and be DQ'd", challenging is not "it didn't break the scoring line by more than half the bullet diameter."

Fun is a variety of challenges with a variety of choices with a variety of difficulty levels. Use orange netting in place of walls, metal screen doors in place of solid wood doors. Let the spectators see more than just the backs of the RO and shooter. Of course a good B-B-Q helps and ladies only portapotties, etc...

[Al Capizzo]

I've been involved a few times in putting together large matches, and I can tell you for sure that whats written above is the absolute truth.

Everything Nolan said will assure a good match, but if there is a problem with officiating the rest don't matter.

It just sours everyones outlook on everything that went right.

Good luck, and have some fun yourself while you're at it.

Al

[BarryRM 18]

I will read this topic with interest, having just finished the Mosquito match in Slovakia, where I was in charge of 10 stages, I have to agree with the above. The quality of the match is directly proportional to the quality of the officials. That is why it is so important to ensure that the people with the right attitude are the ones that pass the level one seminars. It looks like I will be officiating at the CZ Open in August, this is a 40 stage match, so should be a challenge. I have experience of 4 level 4 and 4 level 5 matches, but I think that this will be a test, so any pointers that appear here, I will pay attention to. You never stop learning at this game, the very newest beginner can always teach you something. Twenty years experience, may only be 1 years experience, repeated 19 times.

Have fun, Y'All.

Barry

[shred]

What everybody else said. Also, don't go hogwild on movers or funky stage designs-- it's gotta work, work consistently, and work perfectly for however many days and however many shooters you're running through it, times two. Make the challenges shooting challenges and not running challenges or contortion challenges.

[bgary]

I'll add to the above

-- Take care of the details. A big match with all the big things done right can be brought to its knees if you run out of tape, staples, pens, timer batteries, toilet-paper, etc.

-- Take care of the staff. ROs and staffers should not have to bring their own (or worse, run into town) to get water, gator-ade, coffee, snacks, lunch, whatever. Not only is it a morale issue, it helps keep the match running on-time.

-- Pay LOTS of attention to your squadding. Make sure that you know how long it will take to clear a squad through a stage (no matter the weather), plan for time to get that squad to their next stage and briefed, etc. When one squad backs up behind another, it slows the whole match down. Think seriously about putting a quick "speed shoot" after a big field course, to help the match stay on track.

-- Have good, written walkthroughs, and have your ROs read them - verbatim. Many many problems can be avoided by the simple act of making sure that every shooter got exactly the same briefing on each stage.

-- Don't use "local rules". Stick to the rulebook. "Stretching" the rules to make a stage work usually only accomplishes getting the stage pulled from the match.

-- I'll underscore a point from above: DELEGATE. The best matches I have been involved with have been team efforts, where some [core] group of people took ownership of different parts of the match (admin, registration, staffing, logistics, food and shooter services, etc) and WORKED TOGETHER. The worst matches I have ever been involved with have been where one person tried to do it all, "his way".

-- and, I'll [mildly] disagree with a point from above: Great matches that people go away talking about are those where all the hard work it took to make it happen is "transparent" to the shooter. In other words, your hard work is intended to be so the shooter doesn't have to do anything but shoot and enjoy the match. It is when problems start to be "apparent" to the shooter that they go away talking about what a nightmare it was. They may or may not remember the great stages, the clean porta-potties, the lightning-fast results posting... but they will *surely* remember the stages with inconsistent officiating and bogus "local" penalties, the overflowing porta-potties with no toilet paper, and the :final" results that weren't right until after several tries. Everything you can do to *prevent* those things is time spent helping create a "great match".

Bruce