First Time Match Director

[grassy knoll]

Sunday was my first as Match Director, I am still digesting everything that happened and figuring out what has to be done for next month's match

do other match directors have secrets for success?

i have to work on stage designs

- they look very different on paper compared to the range

- get to the shooting

- no 90 traps

- freestyle-freestyle-freestyle

squad times

- how long does it take for a squad to shoot a stage

- how many shooters/squad

range staff co-ordination

[Flexmoney]

You will need to time how long it takes you and your RO's to run a shooter and get the stage reset. Time from one 'Are you read?' to the next.

You can't go any faster than the slowest stage (every shooter has to pass thru it).

I like the squads to have at least 6 shooters. One is shooting, one is one deck, one just shot (might have to take a moment and reload mags). You need enough shooters to reset the stage.

[JFD]

Find a "M" or better class shooter to check out your stages. Mine will point out how he plans on shooting it, what lame thing I did that he can "take advantage of", what would make it better, how other divisions will likely shoot it, check to make sure it conforms to the rules, etc...

After working with him a bit, I have a much better idea of what I'm doing. This kind of help in invaluable and much appreciated.

I had 7 shooters per squad at my last match and found it to be the absolute minimum. 9 is better, but after that you run into issues with too much waiting around.

[Flexmoney]

I had 7 shooters per squad at my last match and found it to be the absolute minimum. 9 is better,

Wow. Sounds like they need a kick in the back-side. I think it is important to stress, in the shooter's meeting, that this is a 'group participation' sport. (I'm sure you do...this was just a good place to bring it up.)

[John Heiter]

I would recommend the NROI CRO course to anyone interested in becoming a better match director. It goes over squadding, scheduling, course design, etc. in detail and can be taken as a correspondence course if necessary.

The CRO course will provide you with some general rules that can be applied as a starting point for setting up a match but you will learn to tailor those at local matches where you better know your squads, your staff, and the environment. You'll learn to do little things like spreading new shooters or shooters who are known to be "less active" than others across all squads to keep all squads moving at the same pace. At our most recent match we divided into 18 man squads. That's unusually large but it allowed us to have half the squad taping, resetting, and shooting while the other half recupperated in the shade. It slowed things down a bit but it avoided competitors going down from heat stroke, a very real possibility in Mississippi in August.

[grassy knoll]

second match as MD = lessons learned

i got through the second match in better shape this time, i was able to find the right people to help and from the last match experience assign the best suited jobs to the guys who wanted to help

the squad times were perfect and the quality of stages was far superior than the first go around.

i had the master class shooter go through it for safety and gaming setups, that helped a lot.

next match is Sept 21, and I am looking forward to giving everybody an even better setup