USPSA Category Awards

[Joe4d]

I deleted my original post and considered starting a new thread but seeing as how this is now a discussion and not just a survey I figure I would chime in,

I saw a few posts that comment on having categories so a junior will come so he has a chance to win, same with a Lady, If special categories are there so less competitive people have a chance I say with the exception of Military and LEO (more on that later.) they should go away. We already have a classification system, Juniors and Ladies are more than capable of classifying somewhere and we already have a system for folks of different abilities as well as a system for lowering the class of someone who isnt as competitive as they used to be.

The only special class should be Military and LEO and it should be run as the original intent. You can only enter as Military or LEO special category if you are using issue, or identical to issue/approved guns, holster belt etc. of your department including all required retention devices. Our class system doesnt really account for guys who chose or are required to use duty gear. Just because I work for XYZ I shouldnt get a special award just for showing up with the same gear as everyone else. The award should be for guys handicapped by duty gear and all the retention devices.

On the other hand if we have special categories for marketing purposes I am all for ladies and Jr's, awards as they probably do get the word out and create publicity for a demographic that isnt shooting.

Senior, and Super Seniors are already here and shooting, Military and LEO either show up or dont and these categories are doing nothing to attract new shooters and should be scrapped.

[RufDog]

Being military its hard to look @ this from any other perspective. I will say, the military is a very poor supporter of extracaricular shooting. With the exception of the AMU the military really doesnt support us. The USMC (which I was in) & Army/Guard (which I am in) field a fairly narrow field of shooters. As a current member of the Guard, we have the "All Guard" team. We have sent people to shoot the ITRC for several years. Outside of that it has been hard to sell 3-Gun/USPSA (type) shooting. I have heard a lot of reasons why to include- its not real, it will get you killed, there are no tactics, its too dangerous, the "brass" wont go for it, & everything inbetween. The truth is, as has been discussed else where all firearm training has relevance to some degree. The USPSA pushes so much in the way of gun handling you would have to be a blind man not to see its benefit.

As far as military using military equipment, you are going to have a hard time getting the unit to send you on your way with weapons and ammo (which I completely disagree with), unless you are on a well established shooting team. As for using your military gear, you arent supposed to. Obivously a person could but, thats not the point. A military member could then buy everything in duplicate, problem is there is such a HUGE possibility of equipment variations you would likely never see real consistency, to include weapons (think about it). So, virtually all military members simply use whatever they can/want cause its easier that way.

IN my opnion, USPSA/3-Gun should be full of military personnel, it only makes them better. The problem is the potential competitiors knowledge of matches (most are un aware). A lot of guys would do it on their own, I wish I knew about this when I was in the Corps, I would have been all over it I just didnt know. The other thing is command support, its just not there in most (not all) cases.

[RufDog]

I would like to add that I am happy competing as a regular competitor all things considered. I suspect most military personell already involved would answer the same.

[BritinUSA]

On the other hand if we have special categories for marketing purposes I am all for ladies and Jr's, awards as they probably do get the word out and create publicity for a demographic that isnt shooting.

I agree, we can use the category awards for Juniors/Ladies for two purposes; The primary reason being to recognize the achievement and a secondary benefit to raise awareness that Women/Juniors are competing in these events and to showcase their performance as a means to encourage growth in these areas.

[JThompson]

I applaud anyone actually "trying" to do something to bring more people into the sport. Let's not get hung up on all the reasons why we "can't/shouldn't" do something, but look for the reasons we should. I'm not saying that's happening here, but we have a tendency to push new ideas to the side. Maybe we can look at the benefits of ideas before we go straight to criticizing them. Again, I'm not referring to any one person, or even this thread, it's something I have observed widely both here and on the range. I would bet a lot of good ideas never make it to the table for fear of being ridiculed or shot down.

There's a lot of old guard in the sport with the attitude of "That's the way it's always been done." These guys are very resistant to new ideas or other ways of doing old ones. We MUST keep an open mind and listen to what "outsiders/ new shooters/ ladies, are telling us how they see the sport and what we can do to help bring in more of them. If this sport is to thrive we can't do it without juniors and ladies, it's that simple. With the current climate toward our sport we need all the Ladies, Juniors, LEOs and military we can get, and any way we can facilitate their participation needs to be given serious thought.

JT

Edited November 29, 2009 by JThompson

[BritinUSA]

We MUST keep an open mind and listen to what "outsiders/new shooters/ladies, are telling us how they see the sport and what we can do to help bring in more of them.

I agree completely. Seeing this sport from the other perspective is beneficial. If I were a Junior shooter I'd be upset that I could not take part in the US Nationals because it was held during school term, if I were a Woman competitor I would be bummed about the lack of recognition.

If a match director says that they can't afford to pay for a couple of extra trophies then I know that there are sponsors/individuals out there who would be more than happy to do so. Perhaps members of BE.com could sponsor some trophies or medals for Junior/Ladies awards at the next US Nationals ?

[itchy]

We MUST keep an open mind and listen to what "outsiders/new shooters/ladies, are telling us how they see the sport and what we can do to help bring in more of them.

I agree completely. Seeing this sport from the other perspective is beneficial. If I were a Junior shooter I'd be upset that I could not take part in the US Nationals because it was held during school term, if I were a Woman competitor I would be bummed about the lack of recognition.

If a match director says that they can't afford to pay for a couple of extra trophies then I know that there are sponsors/individuals out there who would be more than happy to do so. Perhaps members of BE.com could sponsor some trophies or medals for Junior/Ladies awards at the next US Nationals ?

I'm in for $100 for a trophy for the top junior in Production at Nationals next year. (I wish I could have done something earlier for Nemo Jr.).

Who else wants to play? You all know you spent much more than that during the first 15 minutes at the craps table this year!

Tell me where to send the check. The only condition is that I get a picture of the award recipient holding the trophy. Yamil will know where to email it. Wait, I think I'll be there again next year. Is it in Las Vegas?

Seiichi

[Chills1994]

Ben Stoeger wrote:

Asking so much information about the respondent seems very strange to me. It likely even skews the results. People that are very passionate about changing the status quo will be much more willing to answer tedious questions in order to voice their opinion. The rest of us saw that it could take as much as a minute to answer the survey in its entirety and went back to surfing porn.

Oh, my GAWD!, BEN!

So as to NOT raise the ire of some mods and one admin here... I will put my response this way...run whatchya-brung, within divisions, head's up.

(ducks for cover)

[Ben Stoeger]

I think there are lots of interesting ideas floating around on this thread, and I love conversations like this.. So I simply can’t resist jumping in.

First, I would like to talk about our current demographics in the sport. USPSA is, at its core, a group of middle class, to upper middle class conservative white males. That is quite simply the core of the sport. Many people feel that we don’t have enough women.. Or enough juniors… or enough whatever. (I don’t hear too many people saying we don’t have enough racial diversity in the sport)

Since many people interpret our sports relative lack of diversity as a negative thing, they feel we can and must solve this problem. Not surprisingly, the solution to this problem is “marketing”.

It seems many people feel that the best way to market our sport to certain groups is to make a point of handing out more awards to people in said groups. We need to “recognize achievement”, they say.

Does anybody really think this will work?

Do we really believe that making a point of passing more awards to certain types of people that we have arbitrarily decided we need more of is going to somehow attract these people to our sport? People like USPSA because of the challenge, the camaraderie, and the fun. That’s why I show up, anyway. I don’t believe that trinkets are going to attract more people.

Furthermore, the argument that we need to do better marketing is predicated on accepting that the current marketing is somehow bad. In the last few years, I have seen women on the cover of Front Sight quite a few times. I have seen numerous awards handed out to women and juniors. We have a USPSA junior program, a ladies camp, and a junior camp. Still, we haven’t done enough?

Furthermore, the culture in our sport is to be very helpful towards all new shooters. People at my home club will stand in line to help a new shooter out. If that person is a woman or a junior, that is doubly true. Still, we have people saying we need to do more? What exactly do we need to do? When are people going to accept that our sport simply does not have the sort of wide appeal that other sports do. I don’t think that is necessarily a detrimental thing, it just is what it is.

The bottom line is this, as a group, we have done an awesome job of making USPSA as accessible as possible to all people. I don’t accept the idea that we have somehow not done enough. We have done plenty. Trying to lure in more people with the promise of trinkets is sort of insulting. It isn’t what USPSA is about, and that is why it isn’t going to work.

[RufDog]

Good post Bed

[Nik Habicht]

The bottom line is this, as a group, we have done an awesome job of making USPSA as accessible as possible to all people. I don’t accept the idea that we have somehow not done enough. We have done plenty.

Clearly we haven't done enough or haven't done the right things --- the proof's in the lack of diversity. Improving the marketing/recruiting from a more diverse population is one of USPSA's needs for growth.....

Trying to lure in more people with the promise of trinkets is sort of insulting. It isn’t what USPSA is about, and that is why it isn’t going to work.

That would be one strategy designed to address the need --- it may not (likely will not) be an effective one. The non-viability of a particular strategy does not preclude the success of other strategies....

[Nik Habicht]

Clearly one aspect of this that can't be overlooked is that humans have a tendency to want to associate with others who seem familiar --- in that regard I think that Women of USPSA (and the Babes with Bullets camps, etc.) have done a yeoman's job of showing women that there is a place for them in the sport....

So how do we expand that?

[Ben Stoeger]

Clearly we haven't done enough or haven't done the right things --- the proof's in the lack of diversity. Improving the marketing/recruiting from a more diverse population is one of USPSA's needs for growth.....

At what point will you accept we have done enough? When we have 20% women? How about 30%? Would you be satisfied with that?

What % of the membership should be black before we can declare USPSA diverse enough for your taste?

I submit to you, that people in your camp will always argue for us to do more, because they never will be satisfied with the results of what we have already done.

Do you think on Ballet forums they are kicking themselves trying to figure out how to market themselves to boys?

Do you think Rap Studios are worried about getting more white guys to start rapping?

Everyone is welcome to shoot USPSA. That doesn’t mean they will.

[JThompson]

This is in need of a separate thread...

[Jim Norman]

We should look at the treatment of ALL categories. Not just Women.

We have a formula for official recognition that includes a plaque, certificate and/or a trip up to the prize table as a category winner which is in addition to your class placement and is likely an earlier trip.

I am in favor of recognizing any category winner at Level II or III matches, regardless of the number of people in the category. Call up the High and only Senior, Super Senior, Junior, Lady LE or Mil and recognize them by all means, but unless the category criteria is fulfilled, no special award.

My opinion

Jim

Based on your response, does this mean that for a Level I match you approve of the USPSA Recognition (APPENDIX A2) policy of requiring a minimum of 5 competitors per Division Category (see approved list below). Is it your intent to only recoognize a High Junior with an award if there are more than 5 Juniors at your match. Same applies to other categories but most matches now have more than 5 Senior/Super Senior shooters so someone in the old $hit category is always going home with an award. I do believe a shooter must beat someone for an award but I am not giving back my trophy for High Super Senior Revolver.

Actually I don't have a big problem with the prize structure. What I was trying to get across was that at a Level II or III it wouldn't be a bad thing to 'recognize' a shooter in a category even if there were insufficient participants to award a prize. Example only three ladies show up at a major match, they all shoot in Open, not enough to award per our standards, but just maybe it wouldn't hurt to recognize their participation. Call them up and let the people know that they were there.

Since we don't generally have an awards ceremony at Level I matches I omitted 'recognition' in Level I from my original post.

Jim

[Chills1994]

Just marketing, I think, with USPSA sucks in general.

Now, granted, I haven't seen all the episodes of Showtime's Lock and Load series, but if somebody from USPSA HQ doesn't grab that shop's main salesman and/or the producers of the show by the shoulders and says, "Hey, help us grow our sport!" and show an indoor USPSA match...well, HQ is sadly missing the boat.

FWIW... http://www.sho.com/site/locknload/home.do

in case there is a season two and somebody from Sedro is watching this thread.

And nobody said that if this indoor range/gunstore in Colorado were to host an indoor match, that USPSA HQ couldn't stack the "field" with a bunch of the top women shooters and make sure that footage gets aired.

Other than that...why aren't the USPSA LPR and O/L-10 Nat's or the Ft. Benning 3 gun on ESPN?

Fer chrimeny's sake... they air bass fishing and bowling tournaments on TV... I think I would rather go watch paint dry.

Edited November 29, 2009 by Chills1994

[99gski]

Ben,

First, I would like to talk about our current demographics in the sport. USPSA is, at its core, a group of middle class, to upper middle class conservative white males. That is quite simply the core of the sport. Many people feel that we don’t have enough women.. Or enough juniors… or enough whatever. (I don’t hear too many people saying we don’t have enough racial diversity in the sport)Since many people interpret our sports relative lack of diversity as a negative thing, they feel we can and must solve this problem. Not surprisingly, the solution to this problem is “marketing”.

Marketing by definition from Websters:

1 a : the act or process of selling or purchasing in a market b : the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service

I don't think it's fair to say that our sport's lack of diversity is the reason why we should market. The purpose of marketing for an organization is growing the membership. As you stated we have secured a certain demographic. The logical step would be to tackle others. I am all for increasing membership across all ages, sex and race. If you are willing to personally volunteer your time and money to engage your personal demographic or one you are particularly passionate about, I choose to celebrate your efforts.

Does anybody really think this will work?

It seems to work for million dollar companies. It seems to work for other organizations. I am hopeful that it will. If not, at least there are those out there making the effort to try. I choose to applaud them.

Do we really believe that making a point of passing more awards to certain types of people that we have arbitrarily decided we need more of is going to somehow attract these people to our sport? People like USPSA because of the challenge, the camaraderie, and the fun. That’s why I show up, anyway. I don’t believe that trinkets are going to attract more people.

Yes, people enjoy shooting USPSA for the reasons you listed. However, I encourage you to do some research on what brings women to make purchases, what drives them to try something new, how products and services are marketed to them. When you understand these things, perhaps you will see the value how marketing to women and awarding them for their success keeps them engaged, interested, bringing their friends along, being open to having their children participate, being pro-gun, etc.

]Furthermore, the argument that we need to do better marketing is predicated on accepting that the current marketing is somehow bad. In the last few years, I have seen women on the cover of Front Sight quite a few times. I have seen numerous awards handed out to women and juniors. We have a USPSA junior program, a ladies camp, and a junior camp. Still, we haven’t done enough?

How is our marketing good? Have we reached that 20K goal yet? Sure, there are programs and camps but how are they actually marketed to outside the membership? I am proud that USPSA has done so much more to promote in the past several years, but there is always room for improvement.

Still, we have people saying we need to do more? What exactly do we need to do? When are people going to accept that our sport simply does not have the sort of wide appeal that other sports do. I don’t think that is necessarily a detrimental thing, it just is what it is.

Yep. We do! Our sport may not currently have "wide appeal" as you stated. I am always inspired by people who have a winning mindset. I would rather support people who choose to make an effort to make change for the better instead of taking a defeatist attitude.

The bottom line is this, as a group, we have done an awesome job of making USPSA as accessible as possible to all people. I don’t accept the idea that we have somehow not done enough. We have done plenty. Trying to lure in more people with the promise of trinkets is sort of insulting. It isn’t what USPSA is about, and that is why it isn’t going to work.

"Awesome" is pretty strong regarding USPSA's marketing. I do believe USPSA has done more than ever, and that's the awesome part. Bottom line USPSA depends on its membership to volunteer and promote. Some just do more than others. Some just don't see the point.

An inexpensive "trinket" that may inspire someone to write a check out for a life membership over their annual membership...

An inexpensive "trinket" awarded to a junior who chooses to stay engaged in shooting over the other many distractions...

An inexpensive "trinket" that makes a super senior feel accomplished after recovering from hip surgery...

An inexpensive "trinket" that inspires a woman to get more involved by volunteering for a Women on Target or First Shots event...

An inexpensive "trinket" displayed on a desk at work that gets someone interested in giving it a try...

Worth every penny!

Julie

[99gski]

Everyone is welcome to shoot USPSA. That doesn’t mean they will.

The challenge is to get everyone to know about it and want to give it a try. For that we depend on the individual efforts of the membership.

Julie

[Nik Habicht]

Clearly we haven't done enough or haven't done the right things --- the proof's in the lack of diversity. Improving the marketing/recruiting from a more diverse population is one of USPSA's needs for growth.....

At what point will you accept we have done enough? When we have 20% women? How about 30%? Would you be satisfied with that?

Hmmm, 18,000 members now with an increase in membership to get us to 30% women members would get us to somewhere around 24-25,000 members --- that'd be a pretty good start for growth.....

What % of the membership should be black before we can declare USPSA diverse enough for your taste?

It doesn't come down to my taste --- I'm talking about growing the sport. Marketing only to the current demographic is gonna be a loser right out of the gate....

I submit to you, that people in your camp will always argue for us to do more, because they never will be satisfied with the results of what we have already done.

What camp is that? Are we in different camps? I'm in the "What's good for USPSA camp," or at least that's what motivates me to do the work I do.....

Are we in different camps? I'd like this sport to hang around for a while, and ideally to grow. Putting on matches for 20 people is fine, but putting on matches for 60-100 people on a monthly basis is a lot more fun....

I'm actually surprised at this particular reaction from you. Did you stop at GM? We don't know each other but my impression is that you're still trying to accomplish more by improving, by winning matches, etc. Why shouldn't we apply that approach to excellence to increasing the number of USPSA members?

Do you think on Ballet forums they are kicking themselves trying to figure out how to market themselves to boys?

Do you think Rap Studios are worried about getting more white guys to start rapping?

Right now I'm not too worried about either ballet or rap......

Everyone is welcome to shoot USPSA. That doesn’t mean they will.

That's almost the whole point --- why do we market? To let people know that they're welcome to shoot USPSA --- and I'm pretty sure that the bulk of the population has no clue that we exist, or that everyone's welcome.....

[99gski]

Just marketing, I think, with USPSA sucks in general.

Now, granted, I haven't seen all the episodes of Showtime's Lock and Load series, but if somebody from USPSA HQ doesn't grab that shop's main salesman and/or the producers of the show by the shoulders and says, "Hey, help us grow our sport!" and show an indoor USPSA match...well, HQ is sadly missing the boat.

FWIW... http://www.sho.com/site/locknload/home.do

in case there is a season two and somebody from Sedro is watching this thread.

And nobody said that if this indoor range/gunstore in Colorado were to host an indoor match, that USPSA HQ couldn't stack the "field" with a bunch of the top women shooters and make sure that footage gets aired.

Other than that...why aren't the USPSA LPR and O/L-10 Nat's or the Ft. Benning 3 gun on ESP?

Fer chrimeny's sake... they air bass fishing and bowling tournaments on TV... I think I would rather go watch paint dry.

Wouldn't that be awesome!

Julie

[Chills1994]

Yes... yes, Julie... it would be.

Why there isn't a USPSA flier or banner blatantly posted at every gunstore I visit... I don't know...

Edited November 30, 2009 by Chills1994

[JThompson]

Ben,

First, I would like to talk about our current demographics in the sport. USPSA is, at its core, a group of middle class, to upper middle class conservative white males. That is quite simply the core of the sport. Many people feel that we don’t have enough women.. Or enough juniors… or enough whatever. (I don’t hear too many people saying we don’t have enough racial diversity in the sport)Since many people interpret our sports relative lack of diversity as a negative thing, they feel we can and must solve this problem. Not surprisingly, the solution to this problem is “marketing”.

Marketing by definition from Websters:

1 a : the act or process of selling or purchasing in a market b : the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service

I don't think it's fair to say that our sport's lack of diversity is the reason why we should market. The purpose of marketing for an organization is growing the membership. As you stated we have secured a certain demographic. The logical step would be to tackle others. I am all for increasing membership across all ages, sex and race. If you are willing to personally volunteer your time and money to engage your personal demographic or one you are particularly passionate about, I choose to celebrate your efforts.

Does anybody really think this will work?

It seems to work for million dollar companies. It seems to work for other organizations. I am hopeful that it will. If not, at least there are those out there making the effort to try. I choose to applaud them.

Do we really believe that making a point of passing more awards to certain types of people that we have arbitrarily decided we need more of is going to somehow attract these people to our sport? People like USPSA because of the challenge, the camaraderie, and the fun. That’s why I show up, anyway. I don’t believe that trinkets are going to attract more people.

Yes, people enjoy shooting USPSA for the reasons you listed. However, I encourage you to do some research on what brings women to make purchases, what drives them to try something new, how products and services are marketed to them. When you understand these things, perhaps you will see the value how marketing to women and awarding them for their success keeps them engaged, interested, bringing their friends along, being open to having their children participate, being pro-gun, etc.

]Furthermore, the argument that we need to do better marketing is predicated on accepting that the current marketing is somehow bad. In the last few years, I have seen women on the cover of Front Sight quite a few times. I have seen numerous awards handed out to women and juniors. We have a USPSA junior program, a ladies camp, and a junior camp. Still, we haven’t done enough?

How is our marketing good? Have we reached that 20K goal yet? Sure, there are programs and camps but how are they actually marketed to outside the membership? I am proud that USPSA has done so much more to promote in the past several years, but there is always room for improvement.

Still, we have people saying we need to do more? What exactly do we need to do? When are people going to accept that our sport simply does not have the sort of wide appeal that other sports do. I don’t think that is necessarily a detrimental thing, it just is what it is.

Yep. We do! Our sport may not currently have "wide appeal" as you stated. I am always inspired by people who have a winning mindset. I would rather support people who choose to make an effort to make change for the better instead of taking a defeatist attitude.

The bottom line is this, as a group, we have done an awesome job of making USPSA as accessible as possible to all people. I don’t accept the idea that we have somehow not done enough. We have done plenty. Trying to lure in more people with the promise of trinkets is sort of insulting. It isn’t what USPSA is about, and that is why it isn’t going to work.

"Awesome" is pretty strong regarding USPSA's marketing. I do believe USPSA has done more than ever, and that's the awesome part. Bottom line USPSA depends on its membership to volunteer and promote. Some just do more than others. Some just don't see the point.

An inexpensive "trinket" that may inspire someone to write a check out for a life membership over their annual membership...

An inexpensive "trinket" awarded to a junior who chooses to stay engaged in shooting over the other many distractions...

An inexpensive "trinket" that makes a super senior feel accomplished after recovering from hip surgery...

An inexpensive "trinket" that inspires a woman to get more involved by volunteering for a Women on Target or First Shots event...

An inexpensive "trinket" displayed on a desk at work that gets someone interested in giving it a try...

Worth every penny!

Julie

I'm sooo glad I waited to post on this one... you said it much better than I ever could have.

You go girl!! :cheers:

Best,

Jim

[BritinUSA]

Its up to each and every one of us to grow our sport. This does not necessarily imply recruiting new members but if we tell people about what we do even if that person is not interested they may in turn mention it to someone who does express an interest.

My 'Women of USPSA' shirt that I got at Nationals is being worn by a female employee at my local gym. She won't shoot, but others will see it and ask what 'Women of USPSA' is.... Free advertising, gotta love it !

Edited November 30, 2009 by BritinUSA

[BritinUSA]

Here's a slight thread drift;

I wonder if USPSA has ever thought about providing standard medals for USPSA contests. Instead of each competition designing and funding their own trophies/medals, what if USPSA had a Gold, Silver & Bronze colored medals? They could have the USPSA logo on the front and perhaps a blank area on the reverse where the Competition Name/Date and the Division/Category could be engraved.

By having a standard award then USPSA could get the benefit of buying in Bulk and pass that saving on to the Match Directors. This would reduce the cost associated with awarding all the categories and allow awards to be issued (for recognition) even if only one entrant meets the category requirements.

The medals are smaller than some of the trophies that are issued and this would make it easier to transport them for those who travel by air.

[JThompson]

Here's a slight thread drift;

I wonder if USPSA has ever thought about providing standard medals for USPSA contests. Instead of each competition designing and funding their own trophies/medals, what if USPSA had a Gold, Silver & Bronze colored medals? They could have the USPSA logo on the front and perhaps a blank area on the reverse where the Competition Name/Date and the Division/Category could be engraved.

By having a standard award then USPSA could get the benefit of buying in Bulk and pass that saving on to the Match Directors. This would reduce the cost associated with awarding all the categories and allow awards to be issued (for recognition) even if only one entrant meets the category requirements.

The medals are smaller than some of the trophies that are issued and this would make it easier to transport them for those who travel by air.

That first part is actually on the survey.... This thread got me motivated to fill it out.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZYT3PW2

Edited November 30, 2009 by JThompson