Bradford USPSA – Experimental Match Sunday, October 1st

[Bradford Action Shooters]

Hi Shooters,

Our October IDPA match is cancelled as our match director and several staff members will be competing in the New Hampshire State Championship. Since the day is free, we thought we'd try something different: USPSA with small squads and start times to greatly reduce the amount of time required to complete a match.



USPSA matches have difficulty scaling when squad sizes increase beyond 12 shooters. Shooters can wait an hour or more between runs and the match can last all day. As much as we all enjoy shooting, it can be very difficult to dedicate an entire day to it.



Our proposed solution: USPSA with Golf style foursomes and defined start times.

At 10 AM, we will start a squad of 4 shooters and continue starting them every 15 minutes thereafter. This should result in your match lasting 1 hour in length. Your total time on the property should be about 90 minutes.

Please see the match particulars below for more information.



If you have any suggestions or ideas to improve the format of the match, please let me know. If you would like to RO and score a squad, we'd love to have your help.



We need a minimum 4 RO's and 16 competitors to test his out. Be a part of history! This could revolutionize the sport as we know it!



Match Particulars:

Set up Date & Time: Saturday September 30[SUP]th[/SUP], 1 PM

Match Date & Time: Sunday, October 1[SUP]st[/SUP], 10 AM

Start times: First squad 10 AM and every 15 minutes thereafter. Staff shoots at 9 AM

5 Stages: 3 intermediate stages, 1 short stage and a classifier stage.

Match Fee: $25

Please arrive 20-30 minutes before your start time so you can register and see the stages ahead of your squad’s abbreviated walk through.

Register for this match on Practiscore at the following link:

https://practiscore.com/clubs/bradford-action-shooters

When squading online, please fill the earliest squad times first.

If spots are open, shooters will be able to shoot the match a second time for $15.00

Match staff: Anyone who volunteers to help with the build Saturday will shoot the match for free Sunday at 9 AM. Additionally, RO’s will received a $20 dollar honorarium for each foursome squad they run and score. Please e-mail me ([email protected]) if you would like to volunteer to RO and Score. You will need a timer and a device running Practiscore. I have 2 timers and an Ipad someone can borrow. ROs must break the stages down and put away the equipment at the end of the match.

If you have any questions or ideas regarding the match, please post them into this thread. I’m very interested in your feedback before and after the match.

Thanks and see you there!

BAS

 

[Cuz]

This certainly sounds like an interesting concept. Only the ROs and staff end up spending the whole day.

 

[Bdh821]

Can we sign up for 2 squads and shoot twice?

 

[Bradford Action Shooters]

Cuz - That's the dream! ;D

Bdh821 - You certainly can - as many times as you want and in as many divisions as you'd like!

Please re-squad (at least) 1 hour and 15 minutes after your initial squading. i.e. If your first start time is at 10 AM, you'll finish your 5 stage match at 11 AM. So squad the second time with the 11:15 AM squad.

FYI - The classifier will be 03-05 Paper Poppers.

Thanks and see you there!

BAS

 

[Bradford Action Shooters]

The Experimental Match Results are in:

https://practiscore.com/results/new/44395



https://www.uspsa.org/uspsa-display-match-results-detail.php?indx=23325



Special thanks to Will and Bill who braved an all afternoon long downpour during the Saturday setup! Additionally, Bill did a great job Sunday morning setting up stages on the fly around our newly formed water hazards!


Thanks to all who ROed, scored, shot and helped out! We had a small group, but they were excellent performers and great squad mates!


A note on 4 man squads:


The 4 man squads (from this point forward to be known worldwide as "Bradford Squadding)" ;D worked very well. Everyone shot their five stage match in less than an hour and one group finished in 37 minutes. My kind of match!!! It was nonstop action with no down time.

In the after action review, the staff consensus was that 4 shooters, 1 dedicated RO and 1 dedicated Scorekeeper was the optimal mix. The RO runs the timer, calls the scores and tapes with a tape gun. The score keeper inputs it into Practiscore. The 1 free shooters can help out with with tape and resetting.

On all stages we ran below 2 minutes a shooter and ran ahead of schedule all day. This allowed some folks to go home after 5 stages and others to shoot the match again.

We'll use Bradford Squadding at our regularly scheduled match October 15th. Come check it out - It will change the way you shoot USPSA!

Thanks and see you there!

BAS

 

[SJan]

Looks like you had 11 people, with everyone except for 2 shooting it twice.

What are your thoughts on how this would have ran if you had 20,30,40 people?

 

[CTjer]

Jack, is there a reason I have a ZERO on stage 3 (Islands)?

 

[Bradford Action Shooters]

CTjer - There are two other shooters who have 0 for that stage on their second run. Who was the score keeper? Maybe the sync up with my phone didn't go though. Tell me who it was and if it's on their device still, I can phone them and key it in.

SJan - I think it will work for a normal match capacity. (Shooters and staff chime in with your thoughts)...I think the key is start each squad on time or earlier and avoid reshoots and back ups like the plague.

At our October match I'll try to break it with higher round counts and more shooters. If it works, it'll really be something. At this match the shooters were very good (fast). A squad of all beginners might break it too.

LOL - I guess its sort of like practice - push the speed until the accuracy fails and then back it down to optimal hit factor!

Best -

Jack

 

[CTjer]

CTjer - There are two other shooters who have 0 for that stage on their second run. Who was the score keeper? Maybe the sync up with my phone didn't go though. Tell me who it was and if it's on their device still, I can phone them and key it in.

Best -

Jack

YOU were the score keeper. Hahaha

 

[CTjer]

I think you could run this just fine with 40-60 shooters.

We never took more than 10min on any stage. So, as long as stages aren't layed out with a long reset in the middle, it should be fine.

It was nice to not sit around for long periods of time between shooting too.

 

[Bradford Action Shooters]

CTJer - Sorry about that. Must have gotten overlaid by another device during the sync or more likely, I just plain screwed up! Your next match is on me!

Sorry again and best wishes-

Jack

 

[Medic2RN]

I shot today’s match and was in the first foursome that had the 10 o’clock tee time. We started on time and had reset the last stage 47 minutes later.
Our group consisted of 4 shooter, a RO and someone who taped and reset the steel. This worked out well because it allowed all shooters to reload, get hydrated and all set up for the next stage. The next step, like Jack said is to run the day with as many shooters as possible to see if we can break the system. I look forward to helping out with that event.

Thanks for a great day (47 minutes) of shooting,
Bill

 

[hedgehound]

A lot of thanks to Bradford folks and Jack for organizing this match and for braving a new format.

I think it will work with evenly timed/sized stages and small squads 4-5 people and enough RO/Staff to run them. It looks to me that the separate tapers/extra scorers are needed, though.

The safety briefing could be for every squad at arrival.

I am not sure how to deal with the walk through?

I would like to see this tried few more times, one test run is not statistically significant. Need more people on the match. Also, breaking things down after was some work for the few people left.

As a side note: I was the squad, as other people were no shows. I was overwhelmed by the number of ROs, I know the "reshoot curse" really works for me too.

 

[Doge]

Fun and fast paced! Once we got the tempo going it went smoothly.

-Marc S.

 

[noxin]

SJan - I think it will work for a normal match capacity. (Shooters and staff chime in with your thoughts)...I think the key is start each squad on time or earlier and avoid reshoots and back ups like the plague.

Maybe it's my pessimistic and cynical outlook on the world, but this makes it seem like you would actively dissuade people from opting for a reshoot when it was appropriate. Please tell me you were talking about avoiding the typical causes of reshoots (failure to reset and whatnot) instead.

 

[newportri]

That's a great concept and I hope it works out.

 

[Bradford Action Shooters]

Follow up:

We ran this squading method for a 6 stage match today with 26 shooters. Some stages we're complex with lengthy resets. We had mixed results with a pretty good day over all.

If you were in the the first or second foursome it went extremely well. In and out in an hour fifteen.

If you were in later squads, your start times we're pushed back as the squads started to run over their allocated time slots. Probably done in 1.5 -2 hours.

If you were in the match staff and shot at 9 AM, your match was disjointed and you had to 'make up' the remaining stages after foursomes finished up or squeezed in between squads when a bay opened up. The staff worked from 7 AM to 1 PM, so no time savings there. The staff worked really hard and the format likely put them at a competitive disadvantage a little more so than ROing and scoring a regular style squad does.

From an MD stand point, it was quite a bit more work than the regular match format. I was 'on' most of the morning checking shooters into squads. The traditional format frees up the MD right after registration and the shooters meeting.

Conclusion: It's really fun to shoot a fast match where there's not a lot of down time! But it's a lot of work and more complex.

There were more ideas on how to make it better which we'll mull over the winter. For our November match, we'll switch back to the regular format.

Thanks to everyone who shot and helped out - as always - your support is greatly appreciated!

Best wishes,

BAS