Offer Squadded Practice Adding Coaching to Warmup Matches?

(edited 8-Dec-2009) - In response to feedback received, it seems that the existing Warmup matches should best be left alone as individual matches.  In order to support individual and team training opportunities, I propose that DCRA sell timeslots on particular targets, which can be bought ahead of time and also at the matches. I am thinking that the morning's shooting (0800-1130) and the afternoon's shooting (1300-1700) would be parcelled into 30-minute blocks. Pricing hasn't been finalized yet, but I am thinking that $20 per block might fit into the scheme of things (it would cover the DCRA's staff costs, and it would be cheaper that the warmup matches which have additional costs and benefits due to prizes being offered).


I anticipate that the available ranges for squadded practice would be: Fri AM - 300m (and perhaps 900m too);  Fri. PM, 900m; Sat. AM 500y and 900m; Sat PM 900m.  I would like to see a grid of available times and distances included on our entry form, which would allow people or teams to request particular timeslots ahead of time, and reduce some of the last-minute crunch associated with registration and shooting the first couple of days.

For a team to buy all seven timeslots for a morning's shooting, for two adjacent targets, would be $280, and to buy all eight timeslots on two targets for an afternoon's shooting would be $320. So for $600, on Friday a team could spend all morning at 300m on two targets of their own, and the entire afternoon on "their" two targets at 900m. The afternoon's 900m time could be particularly useful, since on most days it would likely include a couple of hours of pretty challenging winds (certainly 1300-1530 are usually 'worthy' conditions at Connaught), and also at least an hour of fairly mild wind conditions at the end (might be useful to verify that peoples' gear is performing well at 900m). It would seem to me that a couple of dedicated targets could provide a whole lot of shooting opportunity for a squad of 10 people, so for $60 per person you could build yourself a customized "training camp" day.


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(edited 3-Nov-2009) Original proposal - "Adding Coaching to Warmup Matches?"

Prior to our Grand Aggregate starting on the afternoon of First Sunday, we hold two and a half days of Warmups. The Warmups serve a number of important functions, some of them being getting newly hired butts markers and range line staff up to speed, providing elevation zeroes for shooters, allowing shooters for whom Connaught is not their home range to get a good feel for the range prior to the Grand, and also as worthwhile matches in and of themselves.

A common complaint about our fullbore shooting programme, nationally and provincially, is that we don't get nearly enough opportunities to shoot in team matches under coaching. And we seem to get even less opportunity to shoot under coached practice. Yet the most prestigious international matches that we fire, both F-Class and TR, are team shooting events, which the Brits seem genetically predispositioned to win. Of course it's not genetic, but it is almost certainly helped by the fact that the Brits do a lot of shooting under coached team conditions.

I therefore propose that some of our Warmup Matches be modified so as to permit the shooters to be coached. By this I mean that a shooter would be allowed to fire his score individually (in the usual way), but if he wished to fire under the direction of the coach, he would be permitted to do so and his score would be accepted. Some feedback already received has indicated that perhaps shooters firing the warmup matches individually might find this to be unfair, so perhaps we should offer a prizelist that recognizes both individually-fired scores as well as coached scores (and perhaps the most meaningful way would be to have the coached scores be counted as teams of four or eight shooters).

What I would like to see happen is that groups of shooters, including but definitely not limited to national teams, would set up coaches and plotters on one or more targets, and then run through a succession of shooters. Multi-target collaboration amongst the coaches would be permitted.

If we use standard ICFRA team match timings (1m15s per shot), then over the course of a three-hour morning or afternoon time block there would be time for about eight shooters to fire on each target. So if a Palma Training Squad wanted to staff up four targets, they could have those four coaches assess 32 shooters. Or if a visiting team were sized to fire the 12-shooter Commonwealth Match (e.g. the German or GBRT team), they could set up their official team on three targets and they could have every one of their shooters fire twice.

In a sense this wouldn't be a "real team event" because I am suggesting that only individual scores be counted. This is partly to allow and encourage a shooter on his own to still go ahead and shoot the match, but it's also a deliberate effort to encourage the teams to treat this as much as a training exercise than as a match in and of itself.

Two major reasons (from the shooter's point of view) for Warmups is to get elevation and windage zeroes, and to also get a refresher course in reading Connaught's winds. Participating in a team shoot, as a shooter and as a coach or plotter, ought to fully provide this important warmup function.

In another posting I am proposing to delete 1st-Fri-AM's Sierra 300m ISSF match. I propose to replace Friday AM's firing with an as-yet-unnamed match, consisting of 2ss15 @ 300m and 2ss10 @ 900m

My preliminary proposal at this point is to:

• Maintain as an individual match the Ottawa Regiment (2ss15 @ 800m 1st-Friday evening)
  
• Maintain as an individual match the Army and Navy Veterans Match (2ss15 @ 900m 1st-Sat afternoon)
• Amend to be "Coaching Permitted" the as-yet-unnamed-match (Fri-AM 2ss15@300m + 2ss10@900m)
• Amend to be "Coaching Permitted" the Long Range Challenge I (Fri-PM 2ss15 @ 900m plus another 2ss15 @ 900m)
• Amend to be "Coaching Permitted" the Gooderham (Sat-AM 2ss15 @ 500y plus 2ss10 @ 900m)
  
• Amend to be "Coaching Permitted" the Long Range Challenge II (Fri-PM 2ss15 @ 900m plus another 2ss15 @ 900m)

Match and aggregate-wise, I suggest this:

• Each "Coaching Permitted" match would maintain its present structure w.r.t. declaring individual match winners. The only change here is that some shooters may have turned in their score under the influence of a coach.
• We could add concurrent team (perhaps 4-shooter?) aggs for each of these matches.
  
• We could also add a concurrent team agg (8 shooters? 12 shooters?) for the agg of all of these matches