I survived my first official match as director, and I have to say… whoah. My hats are off to every Match Director everywhere. Whatever benefit or advantage might be gleaned from designing the stages is quickly overshadowed by the responsibility of being both the Match Director and a Safety Officer. I’m going to need a lot more experience and mental preparation in order to keep up with my mental game in that face of all that. That will likely be a year(s) long project.
So I designed 5 stages, mostly in the spirit (or A spirit anyway) of St. Patrick’s Day, and added the 5×5 Classifier to make a 6 Stage match with a minimum round count of 93. I was really looking forward to shooting stage 4 after seeing what the build crew did with it, and I ended up doing really well on it, but of course it was the only non-classifier stage I failed to film. You can check out the whole matchbook here.
Here is the video, followed by my great/ok/needs work evaluation.
The Great Stuff
- Stage 2: Fast movement, transitions, and visual flow was purposeful.
- Stage 3: Going right to moving and shooting.
- Stage 4: Fast engagements, quick 2 hits on drop turner on it’s first exposure.
- Stage 6: High accuracy under speed.
- All Stages: Speed is improving across the board. Moving well, transitions and splits are progressing.
The Okay Stuff
- Stage 1: Zero down but would have been faster without extraneous shots.
- Stage 3: Shooing on the move was accurate enough, if still a little slow and uncomfortable.
- Stage 4: Two quick hits on drop turner but both were high and one was long.
- Stage 5: Speed was good, but draw and reload could shed weight.
- Stage 6: Cadence was fast but could get a little faster for dumped rounds. Work on calling shots on moving targets.
- All Stages: Hasty planning and execution have improved.
Stuff that Needs Work
- Stage 1: Support Hand cadence. Dot acquisition.
- Stage 2: Magazine Grab and stow. Failed to call a shot and ended up with a hardcover hit.
- Stage 3: Visual patience under momentum (T5). Stop returning to cover unnecessarily.
- Stage 5: Dropped 5 points on an otherwise master classifier run. A little more discipline.
- All Stages: Sticking to the Process – Analyze, Strategize, Memorize, Visualize. Much of my shooting skill is subconscious, my process needs to be too.
It was a great day to shoot an IDPA match, great weather, great turnout, and even though I had little sleep, many distractions, and low expectations, I managed to have a great outcome to my own performance. Life is great!