Saturday, June 12 the 2010 Texas IDPA Championship was held in Greenville, Texas at the Jacob's Plain Gun Club, and I'm excited to report I had my first taste of success in the sport.
I started competing in IDPA back in October of 2009, and between then and now I've competed in club matches probably a dozen times. In November I shot my first qualifier stage and qualified as a Marksman with my Glock 17 in the SSP division. Since then I've been focused on getting better at the sport, with the goal of being promoted to expert by the end of 2010. In addition to occasional club matches, my training has focused on relevant range time at TDSA in Dallas, TX, dry fire at home, and of course the Advanced Pistol I course taught by Len Baxley at TDSA. The class with Len Baxley was the most impactful aspect of my training, by far.
Sometime mid-May I decided to compete in the Texas State Championship, and began gearing up my training in preparation. The increase in training consisted of more and better focused dry fire practice using an iPhone app called "dry fire trainer," and shooting a few hundred rounds per week at the range.
The days leading up to the competition I checked the official website several times and made my plan for the morning of the match. This is where I made a huge, huge error. For some reason I wrote the official start time down incorrectly in my little calendar thing - 8:30 instead of 8:15. I thought the registration tent opened at 8:15. I planned to arrive right at 8:15 so I could get signed in and have a few minutes to get ready before the match began. This was mistake number one. Mistake number two was trusting Google maps to plot my route to the match. Google estimated the trip time to be 50 minutes, so I gave myself an extra few minutes, but that's it. As it turned out, Google's route stopped where the road to the competition began, instead of stopping 10 miles down that road where the range was located.
So I was going to be late due to my stupid error, and Google made me even more late by giving me an unexpected 10 miles to drive. I ended up pulling into the parking area at 8:20 or so, and could hear gunshots going off as I pulled my gear from my car. Uh oh.
I sprinted to the registration table where I received my name tag and my information packet and was told what stage to shoot first. I ran over to the stage, handed the safety officer my late score sheet, and asked how much time I had before I had to shoot. "You're next." He said. So I ran (there was a lot of running, apparently) to the safe area and strapped my gun on, and ran back just in time to get a few pieces of instruction from the Safety Officers of the stage. I didn't, however, get to see a stage walkthrough, and I didn't get to see anyone else shoot the stage. The buzzer went off and I did the best I could, but there was one disappearing target that was activated by a popper that I completely missed. 10 points down already, and this was just the first stage.
This was my first ever major match, and I wasn't really sure how the stages were supposed to run. I thought that I had to be constantly shooting a stage or I would miss one and run out of time before the day was over. I later learned that I had more time between stages than I thought, and I could have taken a moment to collect myself. Oh well - lesson learned. But after the first stage I was very rattled and desperate to get my scoresheet in for the next stage so I could keep up with the groups. Again, I didn't get to see a walkthrough, though I did get to see a few people shoot the stage. I finished the 2nd stage two points down, and was pretty slow.
After that I figured that my chance at placing well in my division was all but destroyed. I considered just "shooting for fun" and not worrying about scores for the rest of the day. But I also considered that out of 12 stages and over 200 rounds, other people were bound to mess up as bad or worse than I did. I figured that as long as I shot as well as I could for the rest of the day I would at least have a chance.
So I began to speed up and make better hits. At the same time, I began to notice some of the other shooters in my division. Some of them I swore were way faster than me, and probably just as accurate. My hope of finishing at the top was continuing to diminish. But hey, I was having fun. And I figured the guys who looked so much faster than me were probably sandbaggers, and that I would at least have a moral victory when they beat me.
Toward the end of the day they posted the preliminary match scores, and I was excited to see that I was at the top of my division. And I was at the top by a very big margin. I looked for the names of the people I saw that I thought were beating me, and was shocked to see them finish 8th and 9th, respectively.
So I was happy to accept my trophy, and happy that I had achieved my goal. I was also happy to be bumped into the next higher class - I'm now a sharpshooter - as it means I'm well on my way to the Expert class by year's end. However, after analyzing the numbers a bit, I didn't just barely squeek into the Sharpshooter class. In fact, if I had shot the match as a Sharpshooter I would have finished near the top and would have still won a trophy, though I wouldn't have come in first place. Furthermore, my score was near the low end of average for the experts.
While I'm thrilled with how my performance turned out, I know exactly what I need to work on to really start taking time off my overall score: stage breakdown and management. I think those things will come with more experience competing in club matches and more mental preparation before each stage. If I can start to make significant progress in this area, I don't see why I can't revise my year-end goal a bit: Forget expert. I want to make Master class by the end of the year.
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