Introduction
For those of you still waiting on my Area 5 review, all three of you, it is coming. I am planning to use it as the final article to cap off our USPSA season. With the Michigan and Indiana state matches falling so close behind it, I figured it made more sense to get those sectional reviews out first, then circle back and compare how they stacked up against the Level 2 matches we shot throughout the year.
This was my first year shooting the Michigan Sectional after spending years watching some of our local legends prepare for it. If there is one thing Michigan matches seem to guarantee, it is that somewhere along the way you are probably going to be staring at a steel popper from around 40 yards away.
Funny enough, we never really saw those distances during this match. The preparation for them still ended up being really valuable.
I have been pretty open this year about feeling like my progress as a shooter had started to plateau. I also did not have the same amount of time or money available to compete as often as I did the year before. Preparing for Michigan forced me to simplify things. Instead of trying to fix every weakness in my shooting at once, I stepped back and focused on one or two things I could actually control and improve right now.
The end result was that I actually got better at those one or two things instead of staying in the same place trying to improve everything at once. I was very happy with the progress we made between Nebraska and Michigan, even if I still have not mastered the groundbreaking concept of “hitting the steel the first time,” as the great Riley Fox would say.
At this point, I might actually be getting worse at shooting steel because I am thinking so much about not embarrassing myself again.
MATCH FOOTAGE
We didn’t do anything particularly impressive as a whole, but there were several moments throughout the match where I finally started to feel locked into what we were doing. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Major match for me if I didn’t do something goofy, like firing a one-handed shot after the timed stage had already expired.
While it rained for the majority of competitors over the weekend, I felt relatively comfortable shooting my stages at the pace I needed to. The goal was to cut down on overshooting and keep building toward a smoother, more consistent stage plan that actually works.
The biggest thing I noticed while reviewing my footage was how much my pace changed as I got more comfortable executing those plans. It is probably hard to tell as a viewer since I have shown the match in Stage 1 through 10 order and we did not actually shoot it that way, but I definitely accelerated as the day went on.
Slowing things down early helped me find a more comfortable flow from target to target. Later in the day, that made it much easier to confidently move on after shot number two instead of visually fishing around to see if I had missed. I was simply moving my eyes to the next target and picking the next spot I wanted to shoot.
The other major thing I noticed is something Riley has pointed out at local matches. My grip changes sometimes based on the distance of the target, and the FPV footage makes that pretty obvious. You can track the difference in both my splits and accuracy at distance just by watching how the gun reacts in my hands after each trigger pull.
MICHIGAN STATE MATCH REVIEW
Match Format, Staff, & Operations
This year’s Michigan State Match was hosted at the South Kent Sportsman’s Club. I had fairly high expectations going into it given the number and quality of shooters attending.
Considering it had rained pretty much the entire weekend, the stage design and equipment made the day much easier than it could have been. I do not remember coming across loose hardware, bad boundary lines, or barriers that had shifted throughout the day. Even the bags used to cover the targets were noticeably better than the thinner material I am used to seeing, which made both shooting and pasting much easier in the rain.
The match itself also seemed to move from stage to stage fairly well. I did not notice many major bottlenecks caused by stage design or the order squads were moving through the match.
The biggest issue I had was consistency in staffing and rules enforcement from stage to stage.
I am not going to stand on a pedestal with the rulebook and pretend I have line-by-line knowledge of everything myself. I do believe, however, that if something is going to be enforced, it needs to be enforced by the rules and not by vibes. There is no competitive integrity in vibes.
At times, it felt like your experience could depend on how well you personally knew the rules, how willing you were to challenge a call, or how confidently the staff understood the rule being discussed. That creates a weird situation where the competitor who knows how to argue their case may have an advantage over the competitor who simply assumes the RO knows the correct answer.
One example came on the fixed-time stage. The RO asked if anyone had questions, so I asked a very specific one:
“I know we can only shoot a total of 16 rounds, but if we shoot at a target three times and hit it all three times, do we receive a penalty?”
Instead of answering the actual rules question, I was basically given the stage brief again with a smile.
The funny part is that after reviewing the stage later, my score was actually incorrect because an extra-hit penalty I should have received was never applied. So even looking up the rule myself would not have changed much if the people running the stage were not applying it correctly either.
I also had a target that I completely failed to shoot at that was not caught until two stages later. I absolutely deserved the penalty and had no problem with them correcting the score. What I do think needs to be consistent is the idea that once a score is approved, it is approved.
If competitors are not allowed to come back later and negotiate or “lawyer” an approved score, the same standard should apply in the other direction unless the rules clearly allow otherwise. Otherwise you end up rewarding the competitor who is willing to argue and punishing the one who is too uncomfortable to make an issue out of it.
Almost none of us are making money doing this, but we are spending a lot of money to compete. Consistency matters.
That leads into another issue I ran into several times during the match: stage resetting and the shooter’s responsibility to make sure everything has actually been reset.
There were multiple points during the day where I came across an unpasted target while shooting. Because of some of the stage-planning issues I already have, seeing a target with holes in it immediately makes me think I screwed something up. Instead of simply continuing through the plan, I start mentally retracing where I went wrong and it breaks the entire flow of the stage.
In both cases, these were not obvious open targets either. They were tucked into positions where they would have been easy to miss while resetting.
The current rules also create an awkward situation when it comes time to score. If the RO knows the previous shooter put two alphas on that target, I do not think the next shooter should be put in a position where they can potentially be penalized because the stage was not reset correctly.
I would actually like to see some version of the rules allow a shooter to stop and call for a reshoot if they clearly identify and can verify that the stage was not reset properly during their run.
I understand why that sounds dangerous. You do not want competitors stopping a stage every time something feels slightly off and trying to turn it into a free reshoot. At the same time, I am not sure what the better answer is when the shooter’s main opportunity to inspect the stage is during reset.
You cannot realistically wait for every target to be pasted, inspect the entire stage, and then go back through your walkthrough again before shooting. On top of that, enforcement of the on-deck rules seems to vary wildly anyway, and sometimes strict enforcement actually hurts the flow of the match more than it helps.
I would be surprised if most shooters at a Level 2 match had any problem sharing the walkthrough area with the shooter behind them, especially knowing they would receive that same opportunity when their turn came around.
Sure, there would probably be a couple people who disagree, but they are probably the same people who need someone standing there with a stopwatch during Make Ready.
There is also a competitor side to all of this.
You have an unspoken responsibility to get your magazines loaded and your gear sorted as soon as possible after your run. It helps make sure you do not step up later with half-loaded magazines, but more importantly it keeps three or four people from suddenly loading at the same time while only a couple people are left pasting and resetting the stage.
I cannot always have everything completely sorted before the next shooter finishes, but by the time the second shooter after me is getting ready to go, I should be ready again.
It is incredibly easy to get pulled into a good conversation and accidentally leave the work to everyone else. I am guilty of it too.
The good news is that it is also pretty easy to talk while you paste targets.
Would I Go Again?
This is a local-ish Major for me, and I feel personally invested in seeing it continue to grow.
My goal with these Major match reviews is never to turn them into glorified Yelp reviews. This is a competitor-run sport, and we only get to enjoy as much of it as we are collectively willing to put back into it. Sometimes that means time. Sometimes it means money. In this case, it means communication.
I never want to bring attention to something negative just for the sake of being negative. If I point something out, it is because I want to see what we already have continue to improve. I also want to keep figuring out what I can do better myself so I am not contributing to the same hiccups I am willing to criticize.
At the end of the day, matches like this only exist because people are willing to build stages, staff them, reset them, score them, and spend an entire weekend making sure the rest of us get to shoot. That effort deserves appreciation, but I also think honest feedback is part of helping the match get better year after year.