The inaugural IDPA World Championships has come and gone. I was looking forward to this for the last few months, I was hoping to have a better showing than I had at last years IDPA Nationals. I had a decent showing, 5th ESP Master out of 21 and 19th overall out of about 390, so it was a pretty good match. The match offered some tough shots, shots are some difficult movers, options on how to shoot multiple movers, and some stages that were fast 6 round hose fests.
General Match Thoughts
The Good
My general thoughts on the match are slightly mixed. Overall I thought the staff and SO’s did a pretty good job. The weather during the first part of the week was pretty bad, high temps and torrential rain every afternoon made getting shooters through the stages, and keeping the stages set was a challenge. I definitely applaud them for the great effort. IDPA HQ tried a new system this year by assigning a Squad SO to each squad. This SO was responsible for scoresheets, shooter order, assisting the stage SO’s and other admin functions that really helped shooters just focus on the shooting the stage. I think this system worked great and can see other big matches use it to help keep things moving and better organized.
Most of the stages did a good job of testing all parts of the shooters skills. You had to be fast, you had to be accurate, you had to be able to move to and get into position well, and in a few you had to have a real good plan. If you showed up to this match with some of those skills lacking you had a long match. Most of the stages were straight forward and didn’t have any traps that would setup shooters to earn a procedural. If you knew the rules and listened to the COF description most stages were pretty clear and easy to follow. For the most part the stages followed the rules and didn’t make a shooter do something that they knew was against the rulebook. Some matches do this and it can cause time lost since a shooter that knows the rules can be unfairly penalized, in this match this was not really an issue.
The no so good
As I said above, the stages for the most part were good, some were better than others as is always the case with any match. There were a few that I thought that should not be at a National/World Championship level match. A stage that requires to shoot a pick-up/stage gun (a 1911 .45) strong hand only for the entire stage for a score doesn’t belong in a match like this. Yes, every shooter has to shoot the same gun and stage but not every shooter is familiar with the 1911 platform or have even fired a .45 before. They are now asked to be scored in a stage using a platform and caliber they have never used before in the biggest IDPA match of the year. I think this is not a fair test of that shooter as they should be tested using the equipment they have selected and setup. Also since it is not the shooters gun and ammo how are malfunctions handled, should it be the shooters fault if something they did not choose to shoot fails in the middle of the stage?
Another aspect of the match that I found not quite up to a World Championship match was the number of very quick, close range 6 rounds stages. Five or more of these types of stages just to provide filler and round count just seems like a waste. I would rather see 15 or so quality stages than 22-27 stages that are comprised of many quick 6 hammer drill stages. Also some stages had movers and other targets behind soft cover items. That seems fine on the surface but the SO’s and shooters both need to be clear on how hits on those targets are going to be scored. If you are going to hid tagets behind a clothes rack then a clear method of scoring of shots fired through that rack needs to be laid out so the shooters know how the holes/rips/tears/other holes are going to be scored. Finally, the use of t-shirts, while an interesting problem for a shooter to solve, needs to be used more judiciously. Not every stage needs to have targets covered with shirts and in the stages that do have them keep them consistent. Having half the target covered, half open and the same for the No-Shoots just seems odd and doesn’t provide a feeling of a cohesive match. I also feel that placing a white shirt over a No-shoot right next to a shoot target in a white shirt should not be used to try and confuse the shooter. Let the shooters actual ability to shoot determine their score, not how well they can see white on white.
Over all I think the match was success. While there are some things that could be improved and the location for that time of year is questionable I think the hard work and effort of those that worked the match made it work.
