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RO Best Practices

Major match RO refresher

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I recently worked the USPSA Area 1 Championship in Winnemucca, Nevada, and made some observations about working the match as a follow up to my instructor colleague Kevin Imel’s blog post about major match preparation.  This blog article is something of an after-action report of things that I noticed and wanted to share with people as we get into the heat of summer and major match season.

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The Aiming Point — Point AT It

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I received the message below from a concerned range official and I think it sums it up quite nicely. I did notice and correct some competitors not aiming at the aiming point during the WSSC match, but obviously couldn’t catch every stage every time. We deliberately specified a diameter for the aiming point to accomodate a little bit of variation, but sized it so that the RO should be able to tell if the competitor’s muzzle is pointing at it. In the past, there was an imaginary circle of acceptability, but now there is a defined area to aim at. If you are running Steel Challenge matches, then you should be following the rules in this regard. And, the range of height is indeed 18-24 inches, but that doesn’t mean that if the aiming point is 18 inches high, you can aim at 2 feet. That’s not what the rule says.

As a range officer on the stage, you must not start the competitor until they are in the correct starting position–you wouldn’t start a centerfire handgun shooter with his wrists below his belt, would you? This is no different. If the competitor objects, get the Range Master involved and move on to the next competitor. I also strongly suggest that your match uses 9″ diameter aiming points, and 24 inches is a good aiming height.

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Club Culture and You

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(Be a Do Bee, Not a Don’t Bee)

As you may have noted, USPSA membership is growing and so is the number of affiliated clubs, both Steel Challenge and USPSA.  With growth comes growing pains, naturally, but there are a few things you as an experienced club member, range officer, club contact, match director, section coordinator or Area Director can do to help alleviate some of the common issues.  This will be especially necessary with the advent of “The USPSA Experience”, a web site dedicated to cleanly and simply introducing people to our sport.

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STOP! (Before the DQ)

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We all understand that the individual shooter is responsible for his/her actions, and that a disqualification is on the shooter, not the Range Officer that calls it.  As an RO, a shooter having a DQ should be a disappointment, not an achievement. A DQ is ultimately the result of something that the shooter did, not something that the RO caused. “You didn’t DQ him, he DQ’d himself, you just stopped him for it” is a common description of the situation.

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