Team event (in practical pistol)

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ATLDave

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I am toying with the idea of an outlaw/fun match that would pair shooters together to shoot courses of fire basically under the USPSA rule set - except with the modifications necessary to make teams work.

I am envisioning two kinds of courses of fire:
  • Field courses broken into two strings with two shooting areas. The teams decide who is going to shoot the first string and who is going to shoot the second string. The times are added and the targets are scored together. This way, you never have 2 people running around shooting at the same time! Some targets might be accessible from both shooting areas, so part of the team strategy will be deciding who's going to shoot which targets... and doubling-up just means more wasted time.
  • All-steel course of fire, with the two teammate shooters in two shooting boxes, both under the same timer. Object is to knock down all the steel as fast as possible. This does involve two "hot" shooters at the same time, but poses only the same kind of safety issues as the still-rule-endorsed "shootoff" where two competitors are shooting at the same time at steel arrays.
I have a few of questions for the THR gang:
  • Does that sound like an interesting match?
  • How do we create teams? How do you deal with divisions (or classification) in a mixed setting? Do we try to create any kind of balance between teams, or do we let an Open GM and PCC GM team up and just annihilate the field?
  • Scoring: Major or minor? I think each team will have to be one or the other... do we score the whole match one way or the other, regardless of actual PF/caliber? Team scores major if one shooter is shooting major PF? Team scores minor unless both shoot major?
  • Any other thoughts/reactions? To be crystal clear, this will not be a sanctioned match, so pointing out that "the rules" don't permit this is not helpful. I know that already.
 
The most interesting part to me is picking teams.
Do you want it to be a fun event or a super serious thing where people try to crush eachother's souls?
If it's a fun event, make the GMs and Ms pair with D class guys, A's with C's and B with B. If you allow it to be open then yea, the two top dudes are going to pair up and wreck everyone.
 
That being said, I tried to organize a fun shoot off type even with a handicap for higher classes guys (all steel head to head shoot off where the higher the class you are, the more plates you had to hit) and the great majority of people at my local club had no interest...either because they didn't want to lose or because (as I generally also believe) that non-sanctioned, made up rules type events are terrible and I try to avoid them.

Done right, I'm sure this would be fun, but I've found it tough to get interest for that type of thing.
 
The most interesting part to me is picking teams.
Do you want it to be a fun event or a super serious thing where people try to crush eachother's souls?
If it's a fun event, make the GMs and Ms pair with D class guys, A's with C's and B with B. If you allow it to be open then yea, the two top dudes are going to pair up and wreck everyone.

Yep, that's pretty much what I was thinking. For making things competitive for the largest number of people, it would be ideal to have a ranking (based on overall, not division-specific, performance in prior matches) and just "folk" the top half to the bottom half of the list. If the field is 30 shooters, #1 and #30 are a team, #2 and #29, and so on.
 
Yep. That's how we were going to do the matchups in the head to head tournament I had planned.
 
Were you going to do a single-elimination bracket? I could see how many people who are more casual competitors wouldn't be too psyched to perhaps shoot only a single stage and donate their registration fee!
 
I wanted to do a slightly shorter USPSA match to seed the competitors, then double elimination once the bracket was decided. For each class above D class we would add an extra plate. An optic division adds and extra plate and PCC starts empty chamber.
We ran it as a trial run with some C, B, A and GM shooters one Friday night and it was a pretty even match but the majority of the other match competitors weren't interested in a shortened monthly USPSA match in order to fit it in.
 
I'd be swapping this for a weekly match, so the loss of a regular match shouldn't be too painful for folks.
 
Maybe you could devise some type of handicap system where gm shooters start with X seconds added to their time and lesser amounts down the line.
 
Sounds like it might be a fun thing.
I would say either all major or scores as minor.
I shoot SS minor, but not letting the guys who shoot major PF score major would be a bummer for them.
 
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