The State match came and went and it was a pretty good match. There were 10 stages and a minimum of 143 rounds, no standards stage which is fine with me. There were 170 + shooters that signed up to shoot so it was a pretty big turnout with about 130 shooting sunday. They broke it into 10 squads for the first stae then it was open squading after that. I really like open squading but the fact that they filled every stage to start meant that from the begining there was a back up on a few stages, the ones that were a little more involved and had more props to set. Also I didn't walk through the stages before I showed up at that bay so I ended up leaving the hardest stage as my last one, it had 2 fast swingers, one of them at 20 yards. All in all though it was pretty good and I shot well.
I could go through all the stages but I am sure that would bore some people so I will just touch on the hilights of my match. I didn't shoot blindingly fast but I was quick and with that I was also pretty accurate. I was 16 down total going into the last stage and ended up 25 down total. I was able to keep focused and never earned any PE, NT's, FTN's, I think that was the other contributing factor to me winning.
Everything seemed to work out well, I never had a complete meltdown on any particular stage. I had 4 really good stages (2 of those were pretty good), 3 just OK stages, and 3 stages that were not good but didn't completely kill me. The good thing is that I was able to no dwell on the stages that were bad. I shot them, realized what happened and moved on.
One of the problems was a problem with gun, I did a reload and when the slide dropped it didn't strip a round so when I got to the next position it went "click". I racked it but then it tried to double feed so I had to reload again, looking at the video and timing it this cost me atleast 8 seconds. The other bad stages were just not shot well. One of them had some 8" steel plates at about 10 yeards or so and missed them on the first shots so I had to go back and that costs time. I just got into too much of a hurry and it cost me a little. The last stage that was not all that good was after about an hour wait without shooting, it was stage 1 and after sitting that long I just didn't move or react as fast as I wanted. It was towards the end of the day and I was starting to get tired.
The first stage I shot was a freestyle, sronghand, weakhand stage, stage 8. Gee what a great place to start. I shot it well but had an issue again with no round stripped on the reload soooooooo...."click". That is 3 times I have had this problem now so I really need to find the cause, I am thinking it the way I am reloading rather than a gun problem.
Lessons Learned:
All the other stages went pretty good though, I just tried to stay focused and shot my own match. I went into it with the mindset that I didn't care what others were doing, how they were shooting a stage and that I was going to shoot the stages based what I know my strengths are. If I was given room to make choices on reloads or where to move etc... I made sure I chose what suited my style the best not what I thought the "fast" guys were doing. It is amazing how if you keep your head into it and plan the stage out and follow that plan you will shoot well. I minimized the mental mistakes which meant I didn't have any penalty time added, and I never was surprised by an empty gun. I knew where I would be when I went empty, I knew which targets I was going to engage after the reload. Keeping focused on the stage and planning it out was a huge benefit.
Match Particulars:
1St ESP SS
14th overall
10th most accurate
"MY MAN"
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