USPSA Open/L10 National Match stage #11: "Go Sit In The Corner"

This is the second in a short series of articles describing the experiences of competitors at a Club Match which features stage designs published by USPSA and which are intended for the 2007 USPSA Open/L10 National Match.

The first in the series featured Stage 2: "Home Run".

This stage is Stage 11: "Go Sit In The Corner".

All stage designs (in PDF format) can be viewed at the USPSA Website.

Stage Starting Position:

"Seated in chair with arms crossed, hands on opposite shoulders. Gun in loaded and ready condition per 8.1, lying flat on one of the barrels, muzzle pointing downrange. All exra magazines are placed on the opposite barrel."

Comments on the Stage Design:

My personal most serious criticism of this stage design is that it required the competitor to be position downranged of a loaded pistol. Looking at the published schematic of the stage design, it seems obvious that this is an intentional feature of the design. I cannot imagine what the designer thought would be particularly attractive about this design feature, but this is one good reason why I am glad I hadn't planned to compete in this match.

Am I the only IPSC shooter who feels uncomfortable about this?

Note the starting position (above); there is no verbiage which suggests that the muzzle of the pistol should NOT be pointed at the competitor in the starting position.

I assume that the NROI has vetted this stage; are any of their members planning to sit in the corner on this stage? I suspect that this has NOT been tested in "Real Life" (that is, nobody has set up the stage and shot it, to see how it feels to stare down the barrel of a loaded gun.)

This is not A Good thing. Perhaps USPSA may reconsider this factor of the stage design. I hope.

At the Club match, I was not the only person who approached the Match Director to voice a certain discomfort about this starting position.

Local Variations on the Stage Design:

Looking at the Stage Layout, it appears that the chair (starting position) may have originally been intended to place the competitor facing downrange in the chair. The club match had the chair placed uprange. This may be a slight difference between the "pre-match" version and the "national match" version of this stage.

The national match stage procedures require that the pistol be placed on one barrel, and all magazines be placed on the other barrel. In the club match version, all magazines were carried on the belt. The Match Director at the club match stated that this was because the stage required more than 10 rounds be fired from a single position. In the actual event, the stage design only required that Limited 10 competitors (also Single Stack and Production) be careful about ammunition management. In the accompanying video, you will see that while the Open Division competitors managed the stage handily with a single (hi-capacity) magazine, the Limited-capacity competitors typically broke the stage into three-magazine arrays. The 11-target, 22-round stage was either divided into 10-6-6 or 10-4-8 round combinations, with one hapless competitor demonstrating the standing reload when he realized that he hadn't planned the stage as well as he might have wished.

In the video below, you will see that the stage design leaves very little room for any alternative than that the competitor be placed downrange of the loaded firearm at the start of the stage.

The first shooter, Mitch, demonstrated that a 10-round magazine limitation is not a serious impediment to a fast stage time. Second shooter, Geek, shows the relative placement of loaded firearm and shooter starting position. The rest of the competitors show variations on the sequence of target engagement and the reload-tactics of competitors who have limited ammunition. Clearly, the challenge of Open Division Competitors is less challenged than that of Limited 10 Competitors.