2017 was a great year for our USPSA program, North East Ohio Shooters. We had 844 guns run through our matches, which was over 100 more than any other program in Ohio! Big thanks to all the folks that made that happen.
So, how do we improve our program in 2018? We here is what we are planning:
- We are keeping the same leadership in place for 2018 (Don Maher, Scott Beebe and David Snethkamp). In fact, just about everybody that volunteered in 2017 has already recommitted to help again in 2018. We also have some new and returning volunteers that would like to pitch in this year! Plus, we have added a new field to our registration form so that folks that would like to volunteer have an easy way to communicate with us.
- We have scheduled 16 matches for 2018 on the 2nd Sundays and 4th Saturdays of March through the beginning of November. We did not schedule the 4th Saturday Match in May so that everyone can participate and support the Buckeye Blast Ohio State Championship.
- We initially plan to offer 2 start times at several of our matches (9:00AM and 1:00PM). This will give shooters the opportunity to sleep in a little if they would like or shoot a second gun! We will see how this goes now that we have some additional parking available at the range. Hopefully this will be available at all of our Sunday matches and a few of the Saturday matches.
- The range improvements will add a better experience to all of our matches. Cleaner, larger and safer!
- We will be building more walls in the next couple of months. More walls = better (and bigger) stages!
- We have already purchased a new (and more devious) star to use in matches. We also plan on purchasing more steel throughout the year, including:
- 6 Pepper Poppers (12 total)
- 12 Mini Poppers (19 total)
- 2 Drop Turners
- 2 Max Traps
- William Holmes has provided us with a foot activator and plans to build a second one for us to use. This will add a new element to our stages that we haven’t been able to utilize.
- We have provided stage design templates on the USPSA match page on our website. We have had several competitors that have offered suggestions for stages…so now they can put it on paper for us! There may even be a little incentive for anybody that publishes a stage that is used in one of our matches (hint, hint).
- All of the matches have been added to our Calendar. Links are provided to registration on each date or you can go to Practiscore and search for our matches (just head over to the Matches page on Practiscore and type in “DSS - USPSA” in the search field and all of our matches we populate).
- We will continue to accept online payments through Practiscore prior to the match. There has been little demand to pay at the match with a credit card, so we have discontinued that practice.
- We are planning to offer 1 classifier per month. The classifier will be offered at alternating matches each month (2nd Sunday one month, then 4th Saturday the next, and repeat…). We also tentatively plan on offering 2 “classifier” matches during the year: the first at the beginning of year prior to the state match and the other later in the year before things get too cold. We still need to submit these for approval, so we will announce dates for these events at another time. If everything work out, we hope to present 16 classifiers this year.
We hope that you are as excited to start the year as we are! If you have any questions, please fill out a Contact form or send us a message through our Facebook page. Otherwise…
We will see you at the range!
Scott Beebe, Owner, Dynamic Shooting Sports, LLC