376: Building a Community: Planning and Staffing a Multigun Nationals

On this episode of Prep & Press, I’m joined by Adam Maxwell, the match director of the 2023 USPSA Multigun Nationals and Assistant MD Kevin Harrington who is also the Stage & Staff Coordinator for the match. And together we discuss the preparation, organization, and challenges involved in hosting a national-level shooting match at Forest Lake Sportsmen’s Club in Minnesota.

Deep in the weeds but very important to a lot of 3-Gunners, the boys provide tips and clever solutions for following USPSA safety rules. They highlight the importance of testing all three guns and note the various types of stages that will test the full spectrum of the skill set. There are visuals to go along with this on the Prep and Press YouTube channel so go check those out if you’re interested.

And while you’re over there I would love it if you subscribed to the channel. 

In our second segment we discuss the selection process for the Shotgun World Shoot and question whether it is fair. We emphasize the importance of community support in promoting and participating in matches. Amax and Kevin share their passion for laying the groundwork for a series of area matches culminating in a national championship and creating a cohesive rule set for multigun shooting sports to ensure the sport continues for 20-40 years.

This is going to be a two-part episode, so first two segments are here today. Second two segments will drop next week.

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Transcript

5:03

You. All right. Welcome to Prep and Press. We got a USPSA. Multigun nationals team here. Match director adam Maxwell. Adam, thanks for being here, buddy. Thanks for having me. Great to be on the show for the first time. Yeah. Exciting. Last time you were on, it was a different thing altogether. And Assistant Match Director for USPSA. Multigun nationals. Kevin Harrington. Kevin, welcome to the show, man. Great to be here, man. And Adam's comment just made me realize that I will never be on the three gun show. The end of an era. Oh, no. That much. But there's only one first, and it's you. Good point. Anyway, guys, thanks for thanks for being here. We got a couple of great topics to talk about tonight. But first, I thought we'd kick it off with a little bit of talk about the upcoming match, USPSA multigun Nationals. I know you guys are working hard on it and wanted to get an update on where we're at, maybe what the division counts, looking like, things like that, and see what else is going on. So what's going on in the multi gun Natch prep world? Well, man, we have better counts. What's that? You probably have better counts on sign up right now. Yeah. As of right this moment, we have about 140 people signed up. Open is currently the biggest division with 49 participants. My personal favorite race that I've been watching that no one else can watch, but I've been watching the battle between Modified and Tactical. It goes back and forth by the day as to which has more participation. Currently, Modified has 36 participants and Tactical has 39. And then we are one shooter away from recognizing Limited, which I think will be Aaron Hayes when he signs up. Aaron out there. And then we got our obligatory couple of people in Heavy who are going to probably want to move somewhere else. But yeah, we got about 140 people, which is already more than the match had last year in previous years. So we're sitting in good shape. More entries been rolling in every day. There's a lot of usual suspects that haven't signed up yet that I expect to any day. The AMU is actually surprised they weren't signed up yet, but I was like, well, none of you are winning a national championship this year if you sign up pretty soon. And they're like, what? So there's a few of those types of people that especially industry people who know they're coming, but they always roll in at the last minute here. But we've seen steady increase. We've been trickling people in pretty steadily here the last few weeks, and I think we'll continue to up to the match. We'll see how that goes. But yeah, excited. We have a strong turnout so far. I was actually on the ground. Work had me up that direction, so I did drop in at the range and talk to management there. And Joel who's the shotgun sports director at Forest Lake Sportsman's Club. He just went to sporting clays trap setting school in New York or something. That's a thing. And he was really excited about it. We were out there and we were, shall we say, shot shopping on what the shotgun only stages are going to have for thrown birds. And so he's got some real nice. Stuff set up for you guys. My goal with those was because typically, especially upper Midwest, we're pretty well known for some hot shotgun, heavy stages, some high round count jungle runs. And this year we have two all shotgun only stages, but they're speed shoots instead. So these two stages that we're talking about here, essentially, they're going to have two thrown birds. And I wanted them to be it's a legit wing shooting shot, but it's not super hard because it has to float there in time because there's a bunch of static stuff for you to shoot, too. So they're going to be very much trying to get as many things done as possible while the birds are in the area and still get them. So we have two kind of springing teal shots for those who shoot sporting plays, and then for those of us. That don't, what is that springing teal. Is like it starts far away from you and then comes in oh, ambush. I like to call it. Ambush. Yeah, kind of a crossing aerial salt. A teal is a puddle duck in the upper Midwest. So it's kind of meant to be a duck hunting shot. Got you. Usually any sporting place course in upper Midwest they'll have some kind of teal shot. And then of course, there's going to be a rabbit also, so a rabbit and rabbits. Yeah, like a setting mallard shot, too. And then there's going to be about six to eight of those pipes that we're known for static pipes. So for anyone shooting the tactical divisions, you're going to have nine shells for eight shots. Make it happen. Oh, man. So I have pipe story to tell you when we get to your topic, Adam, so remind me on that one if I forget. But FYI, for all the people going to shoot multigun nats, some of those pipes are freaking heavy. So you might want to choke up a little bit if you only have nine shots for eight targets. I've read a lot of psychology books here in the recent and if you use the phrase I see should be good, right? That's your subconscious telling you that you should probably choke up. If that phrase comes out of your mouth, you know what the answer is. I love it. That's a very common phrase you hear on stages. How many times have I asked you that, Kevin? What's that? I was asking Kevin. How many times have I asked you that at Lake JKM or something? Like you think I see is good here? Probably every stage yeah, probably every stage of Memorial last fall, too. Yeah, that's true. We kept going back and forth because of the way that we shot those stages as staff, too. Is like, there's a far piece of seal on this one. Should we do maybe a mod? Yeah, at least. And then the next one, diffusion, maybe not. Yeah, I don't remember what stage it was, but do you remember when I kept my mod choke in for an IC stage and then went to replace it to put the mod in and put the IC back in? Did I tell anyone or I keep that to myself? You're like, sitting in your truck and then you walked back towards the Preload Table, and then you walked back and you were, like, doing this lake head scratch. And I was like, Dave, you okay? He's like, I swear I changed my Troke. But now then now I'm going back. Yes. You end up, like, swapping on slicks and street tires and slicks. Wait, which tires do I have on again? Yeah, it was kind of messed up. It was a little bit of a pandemonium there, but it worked out. Yeah, no good. And that's the thing, right? People pick on the shotgun shots, but we're looking for interesting shots with all three of the guns, right? We want to fully test all three. And on the shotgun stuff, I don't think any of them are going to be hard, but they're going to test the full spectrum of the skill set. So wing shooting is what shotguns are for. So we like to do some legit wing shooting shots. So you're not going to be able to just phone in the shotgun. But I don't think that there's anything out there that's going to be particularly hard. And then the same thing with the pistol because it's a multi gun match. Are we not going to shoot legitimate pistol? We got Tango Timmy laying down on all pistol stage that is probably going to really test you there. And then we have all rifle stage that Kevin's doing over at Gate one. That's going to be a full test of the rifle, too. And that's somewhat of where, when we bring a match under Sanctioning, like USPSA outlaw matches, we can do wild and crazy stuff, right? Because they're one off matches. They don't really have to answer to anybody as long as it's safe. But under USPSA, all our stages have to get approved. And this is our first year being stewards of this match. So we didn't really want anything that would cause too much drama with NROI. But also, we're here to crown a champion, not to see who didn't get tricked or one way or the other. On skill sets, you shouldn't be really strong on one gun, and that's why you won the match. To be a multigun nationals champion, you have to be a master of three platforms in a given division. So that's really our goal with the stage design and all that stuff. Fun and interesting stages, challenging stages from a competition standpoint, but nothing particularly tricky or got you in the terms of some of what we would remember. Like Dave from when we started shooting. Back in the day, when you would. Travel to a blue ridge or something like that. And the targets are painted weird colors, or they're hidden from view. Nothing like that. It's going to be pretty straight up. And then going into the last day, we have four smaller stages that are still worth 100 points. So you got to stand and deliver on the last day, and it's going to come right down to the wire on who's got their head in the game and executes at a championship level. I love it. I like the idea of, I don't know, I've shot a lot of matches where things were dragged out, and it doesn't seem like a whole lot of thought was put into it. And when you have the type of platform and the type of stage that is USPSA multigun nationals, lake, you're declaring a multi gun national champion seems like a lot of pressure. Not to put too much pressure on you guys here, but it seems like a lot of pressure to actually test all the guns. So it's cool that you guys are thinking about that and actually putting it out there for the shooters. Well, nothing was whipped out. I mean, Kevin got together a whole brain trust full of guys to design stages. And when were we having those meetings, Kevin? It was like January or February. We started in December, and we had everything done by when was I at your house in Wisconsin? That was middle of February. Everything was done and submitted to USPSA, and Troy was already reviewed it all from people that haven't heard this yet. I guess there's plenty of people that may not have heard anywhere else that for a national level match in USPSA, stages have to be submitted six months ahead of time. So Adam and I already talked about it and saying, hey, we need to start getting stuff drawn up and talked about and divided so we know that we're keeping each round count for each of the three guns at a normal pace. We were having that back at Memorial last year, which was October. So, like Adam said, anybody that's shot Trigun up here at Forest Lake before or JKM with us. Dave, you're aware in the last couple of years I've been the staff coordinator and stage coordinator for JKM, and so we kind of did the same thing, except we decided, hey, we need to do ten or more stages now instead of just five. So I'm only responsible for coming up with the actual design of a couple of stages. And then we got other guys that have helped me over the last couple of years with JKM and stuff to come in too to make sure that we're keeping a flavor mixed up. And then Adam and I basically were making sure that we kept round count normal and that we still were following all of USPSA's rules. So we had to take a couple of little things and say, hey, not for this match. So you can come here to Forest Lake for this match and expect the quality that we've had for JKM and Trigon over the last couple of years and not have any super gamey or circusy stuff thrown in there. This is going to be a shooter's test, not can you decide to memorize a pattern and shoot the right colors or anything like that either. So I think we've kind of found a great balance there that Adam and I are going to be putting together twelve stages here in Forest Lake and test everybody and still have a great fun match and enjoy the squad you're shooting with. That's really what Adam and I have been about since the beginning is making sure everybody's smiling at the end of the weekend and had a great time. Yeah, everybody enjoys themselves. That's crazy. Yeah, right? No, it sounds really cool. So real quick I brought up a visual. So for those that have not been to Forest Lake and have not shot a match, there kind of did the aerial. Just this Google Maps here want to show the different areas and let's see where we at. Over here is where the long range is. So let's start here. Kevin, this is where the long range stage is going to be. Right. Good place to start. Yeah, that's what they call gate one. And it enters in off the road kind of by his cursor right there and there's a little parking lot and then you can see obviously at the top of the screen is the 400 yard bay. So we'll be utilizing that and the 100 yard bay right next to it for our first stage of the match. I'm pretty sure the way to lay out is that'll be stage one and just make it flow all the way to the other end of the property. There'll be two stages there. We'll utilize that whole area and we'll have some fun with it. You'll use a rifle only stage and then a three gun stage right next to it. Nice. And then basically for anybody that hasn't used the property before the road there is a city road and you'll get back on that road and go over to where the red cursor is and that's gate two. So that is the main part of the Forest Lake Sportsman's Club. That's where the big clubhouse is and the big parking lot and RV parking and tons of stuff and all their trapping, skeet fields. So this is the clubhouse, this is the maintenance house with all the equipment in it. And then over here is RV parking. And I believe Mass Director camping will be right there by your cursor there. Over here? Yes. Nice. And then are we using this bay up here too? Yes, that's stage three. So this is kind of fun. You have to go out into the shotgun impact area and there's another stage over here. Yes. We're not using the big sandy area that you can see there, the big blonde spot that's actually really deep, really soft beach sand. The bay next to it is what is locally called the grass bay. And that's going to be stage three right in there. Yes. The sand bay I'm sure you remember Dave, is where you get sandburs in your ankles and shoots. So we're going to try and avoid it just because it's inconsistent. Soft sand. And then Adam is going to be using the area in the woods here I believe down to the right where the trail is between gate two and three Dave. Yeah. Right through here with some of the aerials we'll utilize that sporting clay area. There's a full trail that runs all along through those trees and up north on that other part too. Oh yeah. Up here, right? Yeah. So this is kind of interesting. So there's like a path that goes in through here to the practical shooting bays and there are what like five stand or are those sporting clays there's? Sporting clays, okay. Yeah. This is all and then all that in there swamp. And there's a sporting clay that goes all around the outside of it and. That goes up in here as well. Is that right? Okay. So right where your cursor is now, that's going to be stage twelve. Okay. And then in the woods there, right around the corner of that trail, that three way junction, that's going to be stage eleven around here. Yeah. So right here is going to be stage twelve with the rabbit and a flyer. And then if you scroll back towards the road or back towards the shooting bays. Okay. Yeah. Just in the woods there from that fork in the road there, that's going to be stage eleven. Okay. Got it. And so this is going to be all shotgun as well. Yes. And I think Joel's got going to have it set up. There's a spot in there he's going to try. And what do you call it? Do you call it a belly shot? He's going to hook a clay around a tree on its edge. Dang, he did learn some stuff. Yeah. Homeboy's got some skills. So this is the practical shooting area. I guess it is notable that this not accessed through here. Right. You do have to use the city road and this is what they is this gate three, is that right? Yes. Gate three is right there where your. And so here's where parking is. And I believe this is going to be parking as well. Yes, that whole grass field will be. Parking and this is like the what they call the schoolhouse or something, right? We call it the classroom. Classroom. There you go. That's where we host all of our USPSA classes or Ro classes and all that. And then we store all of our paper targets and paint and stuff in there, too. Got it. So this is like staff shack sort of thing? Yes. Cool. We're basically utilizing every single one of those bays you see right now. Also. Nice. So which do you want to go? Left, right to Left County is going. To be easiest to view. Right to left. Okay. On the right, basically where your cursor is, that's technically called bay eight and then nine and ten is that hidden? The 273 60 degree bay. That's all in Kilos. So we will be utilizing that whole area for one stage. This whole area right here, the 360 area is one. And then the bay all the way on the edge is another one. Okay, cool. All right. And then so that we've got more bays over here. This is more equipment storage for people that are wondering. Yes. The one you're cursor in right now is our JKM shoot off bay. Oh, that's right. Because that's always where we have the shoot off. Two little half berms right there. Yes. So we'll have a stage there. Most of the ones over here are going to be utilizing two or three guns for every stage. So these are all going to be multigun stages here on these bays. Well, caveat, except for I think that first one there. Isn't that Timmy's big pistol stage? I think the first one in that row. Or the third one. Actually, no, it's the third one in the row because that's right next to Mapso's Conics. So Tango is right there. That will be the big stage. That Tango. Timmy finally gets to make an all pistol stage that's over 32 rounds. So he's pumped. Yeah, he's making I told Timmy, hey, it's your chance to make a stage, dude. You want to do it? And he's like, absolutely, I want to do a pistol stage if I can. He's like, are you going to do one gun stage or they have to be multigun. I was like, honestly, we want to test all platforms. We are totally cool doing all shotgun stage and all pistol stage and all rifle stage. He goes, I want the all pistol. I'm going to do it. I was like, all right, Adam's got you on the list. You're doing the stage. And when it came time, he was like, submitted a drawing that was like 35 shots. Yeah, go all out, have fun, do whatever you want. You don't have to follow the short course, medium course, long course anymore because it's not their pistol rule set, it's the multigun rule set. And he's like his only question was, do I have to stick to 32 rounds? He said it'd be a thing. 38 rounds on it. Yeah, he bumped it up to like 45, 46, I think. But nice as we do in multigon. He didn't want to go just crazy to be crazy. That's hilarious. He was like, all I care about is shooting my old pistol stage. Get it, buddy. All right. Have a big barrel there, too. You can stick your tank botini stickers on, have a graffiti barrel. I'm not sure if Troy will see the humor in that or not, but we don't care. That's okay as long as it's a barrel. We say it's okay as long as it's not any other range equipment or rented equipment. All right, so then we have two more stages here as well. Yes, there'll be multiple stages there. And then the new Beta base stage, isn't it? I was going to say, I think that one's the Beta base stage. There will be one that's a Beta bay, but we're not doing triple quadruple vortex shootout type of movement stage. Right. For Jeremy Moore when he likes to punish us. Yeah, that's in the fall. All right. And so then we've got these three I guess these are the do you guys call these the new bays because they're pretty new. Yeah, a couple of years old. They typically just call them the member bays because whenever there's like a weekend match going on, weekend matches can't use those bays, so members always have somewhere to shoot. Cool. But for multi gun nationals, we're taking the whole range down. No members allowed unless we sign up for the map. So, Adam, I believe you're using one or two of those for your short courses. I'm using two of them for short courses. So I think the first one in that row there will probably be stage eight, and then nine and ten will be for Sunday morning. Those will be rifle pistol stages and then the two all shotgun stages that we already talked about. Okay. So for Sunday, you've got 910 and then eleven over here for okay. Schedule, we've locked out to where everybody's shooting stages one through eight. At some point, Friday and Saturday, you're going to get all those done and then everybody else at the same time that shooting on Sunday, everybody's shooting those last four stages. So everybody will kind of know coming into the last day where you're sitting out, you don't have to go, well, he shot this stage and he shot this stage. We'll all kind of know everybody shot one through eight, and now everybody has nine through twelve to go. I love that. Yeah, it'll be that last lap for the checkered flag. It'll be kind of fun. We'll have the scores every as we watching them. I love that. That's a cool concept. I think Vortex is going to let us use a multimedia display that we have access to. So in theory, we should have quasi live scoring, especially as the super squads are shooting, because I made the super squad shoot last so everybody could watch them. Nice. We should be able to see it all come down on the last day because it's 400 points and stand and deliver. Yeah, and those courses, too. I mean, a lot of them are minimal reset, too, because you're just kind of picking up a couple of pipes and then the claythrower is just already preloaded. So it'll be kind of nice for people to be able to watch that end happen with all the quick little courses. Dare I say, like a touch of what you've learned from JKM. Right. Like a spectacle on the final day. What we've learned from everywhere. I think this is a culmination of what Kevin and I have learned from major matches over the last five to ten years. Come down to what we're doing here. Yeah, cool. I love it. We used the van with the multimedia display once, and people loved it, and then the next year they were like, Where is it? So we were like, we should try and get access to that again. And then we saved all of our crazy outlaw ideas for JKM in August. So go sign up for that. Perfect. Well, so both those matches have spots open, so when are we talking about USPSA? Multigun nats, what are the dates? Multigun Nationals proper is July 20 to the 22nd, I believe. Got it. And then for sign up, sign USPSA on practice score as usual. Yes, sign up some practice score. Early bird pricing just ended last week, but registration still open right up to the maps. Cool. All right, gentlemen, anything else we want to talk about on multi gun nets? Yes. When I was there for my meeting, the club let me know. They have a machine now that will throw a thing called a flurry at the five stand. So we're going to have a flurry side stage. I believe it's going to be sponsored by Briley. Is that like that crazy pigeon thing that they had a bunch of years ago? Kind of, yeah. But it's going to be like a series of ten birds from all over, and then somehow we're going to make a side stage out of it, both for individuals and pairs, and then it's going to be dashed for cash. So we're going to do like, 50% payout on cash purse for whoever does it. So it's going to be one of those things, like $10 a run. Do it as many times as you want on your off time, and that'll be a cash pay outside stage. So you can either shoot up the last of the shotgun ammo that you brought, or if you're really into that kind of thing, like, maybe bring extra, bring some extra. But we'll be able to use up some shotgun ammo at the five stand range for sure on Sunday and probably on Saturday as well. How is that going to work? Is that going to be by Division, or is that just overall TBD? Okay. Yeah. I feel like for a partner, I would grab the first open guy I saw and be like, Yo, bro, let's do this. Yeah, I think we might do something like box gun and tube gun or something like that. Maybe just box and tube. Not worry about splitting up between mod. TAC limited. I love it. All right, so a couple of things. I wanted to let people know about the match, too, if you're sitting on the fence about it, too. Adam and I, not only have we been working on this for, I don't know what seems like already a year at this point, we've done everything we can to use our contacts and our people we shoot with regularly to make sure that we're staffing this match. And building this match, USPSA is obviously a big part of it, and they're coming to help set up, and they'll be there. And Troy and Jake and guys from USPSA are going to be here on the ground the whole week, too. But we've pretty much got an entire staff of multigunners from Ros that Work Memorial, Three, Gun, Trigun, JKM, and other major matches around the country. So I think we've come up with a pretty awesome team to staff it so nobody has to worry about some guy that they saw at a USPSA match two years ago grumbling about a rule. Right? So we've already put on one class to get some Ros trained up for the match, and we have another one coming the weekend before the match, too, to make sure that all these multi gunners are cool with the USPSA rules and understand that rulebook entirely, too. I think we've done a good job there. It's definitely been a concern in the past. It's cool to see you guys have. Taken things that people ask me about. I'm sorry. Say it again. So that's one of two things that. People ask me about. Yeah. Who's staffing it? Who's staffing it, blah, blah, blah, ros and this that I don't want to throw too much shade at people who have worked in the past, because there's lots of good people who helped the match other years, too. But yes, when people ask, when people reach out to help. When I was approached to be match director first, I made sure that Kevin was on board with helping me because I won't do an event at Force Lake without him. And all the people at Hawkeye Ignite, he's got a posse of people that help us do all this stuff. I just get pushed forward to do some of the talking a lot. And then I said, I want to use our people. So if you want us to make an event in the in the flavor of what we traditionally do, you got to let us use the people we want to use. And so for the most part, we. Essentially feel we and also I think the sport has burned out a lot of good volunteers over the years and so that's really made me sensitive to if someone's going to volunteer their time, I feel like as promoters it's our job to make sure that that person has something worthy of their time to do. It used to be like anybody who wants to help just come on in, come on in. We have five Ros sitting on a stage. But for people taking time off work and staying in hotels or driving back and forth from their house, whatever they're doing, if you're giving up a summer weekend to help facilitate someone else's fun, I want to make sure that we have something for you to do. So we established a roster of slots who do we need? A prime example. We need a CRO on every stage, we need an Ro on every stage. We need construction people, we need scoring people, we need this, we need that. What is that list? But it's a concise list. We then populated that list with people known local people that we want to use to do it. And then we filled in the other slots. And then once the slots were full, we started saying thank you, but we have everyone that we need. And if you are an individual who has credentials, I mean, things inevitably come up. I bet at least one or two of our people are going to fall off the list. We might need some alternates, but we're trying very hard to keep it to a concise group of people and a concise group of people that we're used to using and putting on events at this club, both from the trigon, the kirkwald, and other known outlaw matches throughout the country that have been known to put on good three gun events. Cool. Another point to the same ideology that Adam and I have had. We've been sitting here in the fall or last fall. We were talking about one issue that a lot of people had was safety tables and preload tables and how USPSA's rules worked with all that because it's not the same as you walking into any regular club match. You still need to follow USPSA's safety table thing, right? So if you're going to go take your pistol out of a bag and put it in your holster, it needs to be done at the safety table. Okay? We still need to follow that rule. Adam and I are trying to do everything we can to make sure that people are not just getting DQed for some BS thing that they thought they were fine to do at their truck. Right? So Admin and I are going to have clearly marked safety tables like USPSA wants and then in order to get rid of the gray area that people don't know what to do about for preloading, because you can't preload at a safety table because you're not allowed to ammo. Right. Adam actually came up with a solution of why don't we use the crowd fencing we use for JKM to set up the barrier for everybody to stand at and watch the shoot offs. So wherever possible, we're going to have an actual fencing area of park your cart right next to it. Go ahead and step in. Preload your shotgun. Put it on the table. You're good. Go grab your gun bag. Go put it on the safety table and unbag your pistol and put it in your holster which is right next to the safety table. So we're doing everything we can to make sure that it's going to be really easy for people to figure out and not have some guy standing there watching you going, are you going to mess up so I can yell at you? That's not the environment we're going for at all. We're going to make every three gunner that would go to memorial three gun or Texas three gun championship or anywhere in the country and still come in and compete. And like Adam was saying, too, come to this national level match where we're going to crown the champion, right? Yeah. I like that. Integration. And there is a I mean, we obviously need safety, right. But there is lake a level of things that can kind of get out of control. And trust me, I worked in aerospace. I understand there's some silly safety things that are thought up in boardrooms, but. Safety wire on every nut sometimes that's needed. But I was really excited when I saw Jake Martin's at Jeff Kirkwell memorial last year. And when we're gearing up in our cars and everything, he was looking around like, this is okay. And then at the end of the weekend, I did have to make the comment like, hey, man, you didn't get shot this weekend. Kind of weird with a bunch of multi gunners around. Jake actually didn't just show up to come see who Adam and I were and how we ran a match. Jake came and shot the match. Right. I guess I left that part. He may have felt a little uneasy not using a safety table for everything, but he even made the comment after we were talking about it, like you just said with that comment, he was like, you know, nobody was like unsafe. I didn't think this was, oh, my gosh, I'm going to get shot. He had a good weekend, too. Right. And that's a really important point that I want to make because this is number two. Right. This is the second thing I get asked about a lot. And we are not saying that we're not enforcing the rules. That's not what we're saying. The rules are there. We have to enforce them. Troy is the range master. I tried tell the dnroi that he can't be the range master of a. Championship, but in the bylaws that Troy has to be the range master at every national level match. Not that Troy has to, but the Dnroi, the director has to be. But it is my opinion that any DQS that happen off the clock, that's on us as officials, so it is on us as event promoters to make it intuitive and easy to follow the rules. And I think where the traps were in the past was there's a certain amount of equipment, logistics that needs to happen. There's three guns that need to get ready. How do we do all this and keep the show moving. All right. And I think the human element of how that was executed in the past is where the stigma comes from. And so it's on us to make it easy and intuitive for you to do the right thing. And that's what I think we have improved on this year. Good. All right. Well, sign up on practice score if you haven't already and do it quick because you don't want to miss out. All right, guys, for the books. There's going to be one for the books. All right, guys, let's move on. So, Kevin, you're a new guest on the show here, so we're going to give you a first crack at the new topic. So I'll tee you up here so you put down World Shoot team seating and qualifications. So what's your topic here? Yeah, I think for me it was a lot of questions that I had because it turns out Last World Shoot, I'm geographically located very close to Josh Fraleick. Hang on. First off, there's four world shoots. So clarify which one you're talking about. Last Shock and World Shoot. I'm so focused on Shocking because that's what's coming up here in town. Sure. So the last Shocking World Shoot was in France and I got to kind of follow along with Josh's story because I shot with him a lot locally and now it's turning out to be the same way. I've got a couple of guys local to me that are going to be attending Shock and World Shoot again and it raises a lot of questions of how that works with USPSA's, seeding of the teams and just who even attends in general. I kind of want to just open it up to see what you guys know and how that works and see where we kind of go from there. So I have some thoughts on this one, too because it's completely been a mystery for me and I'm media in the shooting sports, right. So I would think somehow I would accidentally know about this associating with the people that I associate with, but I didn't. And in fact, me and Mike, you guys might know, is the chief Meme officer at Prep and Press. So we made some memes of like, how in the heck do you know about Shotgun World Shoot? And I put that in the three gun or excuse me, I'm going to be doing that a lot for the next few years. The Prep and Press newsletter that you can find at Prep and Press. Anyway, so I put that in the newsletter and I thought it was kind of fun. But I got a quick reply from a guy who said, this is the process. And I was like, oh, well, shit, that looks like it was out there and I should have known about this. How did I not know about this? So I'm not saying that I was wrong because I'm human and I can't admit when I was wrong, but there actually is a process out there and I was just not aware of it at all. And by the time people started making announcements that they were going to shoot, going to the shotgun World Shoot, the time periods that are in this memo had passed. So I have no idea how this is distributed. I tried to read the USPSA emails that come out, because they do come out frequently, but I will admit that I don't read 100% of those because a lot of times they have a lot of information in there. I'm not sure, but there's this whole allocation process and this is three pages long, covers a lot of stuff. But the most interesting part of this says due to the absence of a preexisting published performance based qualifying process, which they have in Pistol right, and the compressed selection time schedule to provide members at least six months prior to the match for international match travel requirements, which makes ton of sense. The Regional Director and World Shoot Committee, which I don't know what the World Shoot Committee is in consultation with division category team competitors from the 2019 Shot and World Shoot, which those people should be the subject matter experts. Right. Because they went in 2019, we'll identify and select division then category teams that will competitively represent USPSA. Now, that said, from an outsider perspective, you could see like, oh, you could call that oh, that's the good old boy club. Right? Right. It almost says there if you if you know somebody who was on the last team, they might elect you to be a part of the team. Sure. But if you look at I agree. And that's what I saw at first clients as well. And I started thinking about it more. And when you think about who was on that team freylic was not on the team, but he won, right? Yes. Scott Green was on the team, I believe. Yes. I don't know. There's a couple of teams, but they're competent shooters that were on that team. Now, the 2019 World Shoot, josh didn't get on it. Right. And so there's kind of like I could see how you'd go to the people that were on the team, but then are they going to want to give up their spot and then I don't know. I don't know how it's exactly done if just everyone that was on the 2019 team says, yeah, I want to go. And then the selection process, or if they are each like, hey, who would you put on the team? And then those are drawn together. I have no idea how that works, but I could see how it could be seen both ways as well. I actually know more about this than I pretend to. Couple things. One, going back to the 2019 team and using the frailick example, I'm hazy on the details, but there was a selection process like this, and the people who are on the team checked more of the boxes than Josh did, even though Josh was clearly one of the better talented people and should have been on the team. Let me interject real quick. Go ahead. Some of those boxes, and I only know this from I had Josh and Scott on the show after the World Shoot, and there's a recap. So go back it's at preppingpress.com. Just type in Josh or Scott or both, and you'll find it there. But then you can listen to the whole I'm sorry. That was one of my favorite episodes of the show. It was a great show. It was a great show. It was awesome. Magic. But anyway, so go back and listen to that. And that's where this information comes from. But I do believe that the people that were on the team that you said check more boxes than Josh, in my opinion at the time, I remember feeling this. Some of those boxes were kind of irrelevant and kind of crapttacular. So I felt like I had to say that because I didn't think you would. Number three thing that people bring up about my match well, not my match, but the match we're responsible for. Do I have to be a member of USPSA to shoot it? Yeah. Yes, of course. Championship. And then a lot of folks are like, what do I get out of joining? Why would I join this organ? Because it's kind of outside of what we do on three gun side. Why we're not lost sport. Why do we have to join an organization? Well, guess what? You can't race Supercross without a pro license, all right? You can't race NASCAR without a license. You can't be on the PGA without being a member of the PGA, all right? And I'm not going to name them, but people who make that criticism listen to this show. They're the first one to complain about this. They want to go to World Shoot, but they don't want to be a member of the organization. It's Lake. So if this is important to you, here's a reason to be a member of a sanctioning body of our sport, because they're the ones that pick and have to decide who goes. And the other thing that people in USPSA will say, employees and board members, they're open to the part about the lack of how is it worded in here, Dave. Lack of shooting time. Yeah. Event I'm sorry. Absence of preexisting published performance based qualifying process. Right. The translation of that is there's no clubs putting on Ipsic shotgun events under the USPSA banner. There's nobody doing rifle only under the USPSA banner currently. That's not USPSA not letting it happen. They would believe me. They'll sign off on anybody who wants to and meets the specifications and goes through the process. But no club is currently choosing to participate in that part of the framework, so they don't have anything to draw any scores from. Yeah, it's chicken or the egg here. Right? Right. And so one of the things, like, when we set out to this year, I wanted to do an area five two gun match. One of the reasons I wanted to do that was here is a match that would accrue some scores that might be relevant towards picking a World Rifle Shoot team for next year. All right. The other part of this before I get off my soapbox here is I actually shot Western State single stack championship this winter, and I was squatted with Yemen. I was talking with him about this. Lake why wouldn't we use multigun nationals and area five two gun as qualifying scores towards Rifle World Shoot? Because really, when I was talking to him, we were so far up against this deadline that they were kind of under the gun. And I think that's some of other stuff that's going on in the organization, it's just not a priority to them. So all of a sudden, it just reached critical mass and they had to decide. But looking at for World Shoot lake let's use some of these scores from these other events, and they're totally down with that. Just like, find us clubs that want to hold these events and fill out Form C and get the stages approved, and boom, they're in. Well, I think sorry to interrupt, Adam, but so this is on, like a three year cycle, right? Is that right? And then it was messed up because of COVID or whatever. So we as and this is the queen's week. I'm not going to do it, but we as a sport need to think much farther ahead. And the way we as humans think is, oh, shock. And World shoot is this year 23. I'm going to sign up and I'm going to start training. It's like, no, we should have had those qualifier matches in 20 and 21 and 22. I guess we wouldn't have planned them in 22 because of the shotgun world. She was supposed to be 22, but it needs to be much, much farther out than right in front of our nose. And I'm guilty of that in a lot of things in life, too. So I'm not throwing any shade or stones at people or anything, but just bringing it to the awareness of the community. Lake if we do want to think about Rifle World Shoot. We need to start doing those carbine matches stat, because it's coming up like. This summer carbine matches. Essentially. I think for the dates to work, you would actually think the carbine matches would have to be early next year. But in the way that running these events works, we're already stepping off on the 2023 shooting season. All right, so the conversations right now, while everyone's excited about Shotgun events, we need to get excited about Rifle events for next spring. Locking down clubs and dates that want to do them and rallying behind that to get if we want a qualified selection process for Rifle World shoot, that needs to be talked about now so that event promoters can announce dates late this fall to hold events in the spring. Yeah, instead of doing that, we're currently debating whether we should join USPSA or not. That's how off base we are on all this stuff. Two thoughts real quick. One, there's been a lot of people that have reached out to me, of course, with the Shock and World Shoot thing. Kevin, I'm glad you wanted to make this your topic because this is a great discussion and also gives me a chance to plug the Prep and Press newsletter where you hear about it first. Prep and press. But so many people have reached out to me on that. I want to say two dozen, but it's probably more like 20. But that's a shitload of people that reached out to me as an individual for this specific thing. So that said, there's been half that many that have reached out to me like, well, how do you get on the Rifle World Shoot? So there's interest and there's interest in people shooting those matches. And if you want to shoot, you got to convince other people to support that as well. Get together with the other people that want to shoot and try to get a match put on somewhere. And then do what Amax and Kevin are doing here, is support it. Put your money where your mouth is, help with stuff, design stages, carry steel, and go out and promote it like we're doing right now. So it needs to be a community thing. You can't just say, like, oh, Jeff Johnson over there is going to be putting on a carbine match and never say a word about it. You need to support that. You need to tell everyone you know. You need to get your five buddies from your club match to go shoot it with you. All right, I'm get off my soapbox. Right? I think we're probably coming up against the time that you want to spend on this topic. But also, I'll say some people came up to me in Texas wanting to know ins and outs of what's going on with the YML drama that's going on in USPSA. I know all those words. I don't know them together. What is YML drama. That's YML's initials. Sorry Kevin stepped on you. Can you say that again, please? That's Yemen lee. Oh, the president right name is hard. For Americans to say. My bad. Yeah. So people are concerned with the presidential stuff that's going on in the organization right now, what that means for World Shoot. And since I'm connected to some of the people administratively in USPSA, I volunteered to be lake the communicator back and forth between them. And I'll do that in this form here, too. Most of the leadership in USPSA is very concerned about the pistol sports and the board of directors stuff that's going on. So if you have questions about this stuff or you're trying to communicate to somebody the official channel, you should reach out to Dnroi@uspsa.org. But if you want a point of contact on the multigun stuff, I am happy to go back and forth with any concerns or any questions you have on the multigun side of stuff as we're trying to get it moving in a positive direction. I told them that I'm willing to do that and out to the community. I'm willing to be the go between USPSA and this kind of stuff to figure out how we can have a series of area matches that culminate in a national championship. Lake what we're laying the groundwork for here this year, how do we have quantified results that end in a selection of a World Shoot Team that somebody that was decided by shooting. How do we do that? And then how do we bring the multigun sports under a rule set together so that when you're playing this game, it's a game that you recognize everywhere you go. I'm interested in all three of those things so that we have a sport to continue to play 20, 30, 40 years into the future, and I don't see a whole lot of people interested in doing that kind of thing, so I'm willing to do it. So when you have questions about this kind of stuff, if you need to get to somebody in the organization with a legit question, I'm findable out in the world, find me, and I'll either find the answer or I'll get you in touch with the people who can. And I guess I'd also say if you are interested in all those things that a Max talked about and maybe not necessarily shooting a World Shoot, but you're interested in some of those other things, definitely reach out as well. Yeah, I mean, all those events qualifier events, those guys got to get shoot against somebody. I don't necessarily want to shoot the World Shoot, but I'll go try to beat the guys who do. There's going to be practice matches this fall. I'm going. Yeah. I mean, the AMU typically does not travel for World Shoots for whatever reason. So you have to knock off so you have to knock all those dudes down on your way to the top. So there you go. Got to get past White, L and Turner and all them dudes in the world shoots. We want to make sure the people who. All right, guys. So, Kev, what do you think, man? You're happy? That's all. Great info. I kind of wanted to bring it up just as the fact that us talking about it is going to make things more accessible to other people and more aware, obviously, this year, like you said. We froze him. Oh, no, he died. I'll take over. So I will say, though, that while it's good that we discuss this and it's good that we have this little bit of information to look at this sheet, I still don't know where it came from or how you be the first one to find out. I don't know where the train starts, but it's here in the middle. So sorry, Kev, you froze there if you want to finish. Yeah, I don't know what happened there. That was really weird picked. And when he got pulled from President, someone inherited his spreadsheet, and those people are also trying to figure it out, but ultimately it was they accepted applications and he looked through them all. Yes, but when did those applications happen? That's what I'm talking about. Where did this document come from? It's dated march. Let's see, what is it dated? 222. It's dated 222 23. And the deadline is like, March 25 or something like that. And I heard about it after March 25. So that's what we're trying to figure out is, Lake, if we can figure out how to get on the head of this thing rather than tail end of this thing, that's what we want to know. But I did see it. I did see it. I think it came out the last week of February, but I'm going off of memory. It was a short window. Where did it come out? USPSA mailing list, email. I must have missed it. I didn't apply, but Ruben applied and he got on well. Next time, text me. Brother Show is proud to be a part of the Firearms Radio Network. If you like this type of content, help us grow the show and the shooting sports by sharing with a friend. Just open the podcast app you're using right now and hit that Share button. Thanks for listening. We'll see you on the range.