The Home Team Competes In the Big Leagues

I'm not actually sure if we have a team or not. USPSA score keeping is all about individual accomplishments. How well or poorly your comrades shoot has no affect on your personal score. But we all wear the same jerseys with pride to show the folks from foreign clubs just how fast the triggers from Cheshire County Action Pistol are.

This weekends match was the USPSA Area 7 Championship match. USPSA stands for United States Practical Shooting Association. There are more than 730 clubs across our great nation that participate. (Its kinda cool to think about going on vacation and attending a match someplace a thousand miles away) Our nation is split up into eight, multi-state areas. New Hampshire falls into Area 7 with Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island. Last month, we went to the New Hampshire state match at Pioneer in Dunbarton. That match was incredible. Our friends at Pioneer really set the bar high. Their volunteer base is unmatched in its knowledge and stage planning and they draw in a massive crowd for their events. But this is a step bigger. The match is the championship for the six states in our Area. It's kind of a big deal.

Sunday July 21st starts with the sound of the alarm clock cascading through the wee morning hours. Who really wants to get up at 4am on a Sunday? As I fumble to cease the noise, I remember that today is important and I have set goals for myself to accomplish during todays competition. Out of bed, showered, brushed, scrubbed and caffeinated, we fire up the truck and point it towards Epping, NH. For those that don't know, Epping, NH is home to the Sig Sauer Experience Center, Shooting Academy, Flagship Retail Store, History Museum and probably much more that I can not name off. Sig Sauer is an amazing company with an amazing facility. We arrived at 6:15 and found ourselves to be the first vehicle in the parking lot. This can be a good thing as it also gives you first run at the out-house which can become treacherous as the day moves forward. (I am sure many of you know what I am talking about.) Soon, there was a steady train of vehicles pulling in with plates from places far and wide. The Area 7 match starts on Thursday and finishes on Sunday. During these four days, four-hundred sixteen shooters are going to touch off a hundred-thousand rounds of ammunition at hundreds of paper and steel targets. And my goal is to be in the top half of the field. I think its a lofty yet attainable goal.

If you have have been reading my previous writings, you know I have been experiencing some trouble with my red dot. Yes, Jeff finally got me to replace it. 10 days ago, I ordered a fancy new Holosun 507Comp. Its big, its square and its... green. I finally receive it in the mail, pull the Trijicon off and install the Holosun. I put the batteries in my bore sighter only to find they are dead. So I line the green dot up with the co-witness suppressors height sights on my Matrix Arms Invictus and call it good. I figure, at minimum, it will be as accurate as my iron sights would be. I wouldn't say that I am overwhelmed with confidence but I will say that I am going to do the best I can with the best I have.

6:40 rolls around and Dan Cormier barrels into the parking lot. We load up our range carts and proceed to go walk the stages. One great thing about the Sig Sauer facility is their ability to have ten stages. Please take into consideration that I have only been to our home range (CCSSEF), Pioneer in Dunbarton and now Sig. They clearly have a bigger pocket book than I am used to. Paved roads wind through the place with out buildings and ponds. It's pretty classy. The stages are not nearly as complex as I had expected though. The New Hampshire State match had my brain twisted up trying to shoot all the hidden targets. The Area 7 Championship stages seem to be much more straight forward. The stages are good, I am not complaining, but they were not as complex, elaborate or intimidating as I had expected them to be. We make our way through three or four stages and Jeff arrives to finish walking the remainder with us. Jeff, Dan, Liz and myself have come to a lot of these matches together and it is really becoming fun getting to know the faces and names of shooters that you may only see two or three times a year. Walking around with Dan is like walking around with a celebrity. High fives, hand shakes, the exchange of friend based insults. Dan has been running this circuit for decades and seems to know everybody. Jeff certainly seems to have his own circle to greet also and a few times I get surprised by familiar faces calling me by name... only to remember it is printed on the front and back of my shirt.

8:30 brings the safety briefing, which may very well be the most important part of the day. Along with the instruction of what to do if things go sideways, it also brings the volunteer aspect to the forefront of our thoughts. Without volunteers, none of this would be possible. Thank them and thank them often. We also take a moment here to thank the sponsors. S3 range carts. I was able to spend ten minutes at their booth and it only made me want one more. They are extremely versatile and the one he had on display was accessorized to the hilt with the table, umbrella holder, gun rack, seat cushion. It was pretty amazing. They do seem to be much better than the beach carts that we currently use. I looked them up and they are less expensive than I thought. Starting at $390 as of this writing. It's definitely something to think about. Bonus: They are made in America.

9:00 sends us to our first stage and I am excited. I haven't fired my gun since I fiddled with the sight and I am a little anxious. The first stage starts with the firearm unloaded on a table with the magazine next to it. The shooter gets the audible beep, retrieves the firearm loads it and proceeds to engage a steel popper a good ways away. After watching several shooters run the stage, now its my turn. The timer sounds and I lurch forward to retrieve my weapon and magazine. Gun with the right hand, magazine with the left, and for some reason my brain stops communicating with the fingers on my left hand. I have forgotten how to pick things up. I look like a monkey learning to use tools for the first time. After bouncing it all over the table and almost onto the ground, I decide to actually pick it up and jam it into the gun. Talk about a bad start. I rack the slide and bring the dot up to cover the popper. Pow- Ping, the popper falls. In my frantic fumble for mag engagement, I had completely forgotten about my green dot anxiety and inadvertently given my self the confidence to plow through the stage without doubt. I came around the corner, put four rounds into the two close ground targets and then fire an Alpha Charlie into a target the full distance of the stage away, then sprint to the right corner, two more targets, dart forward and left to clean up the remaining seven targets. This is going to be fun. The Range Safety Office calls out 20 Alphas, 2 Charlies and 3 Deltas. 3.33 hit factor including the rocky start. I no longer believe this sight is going to have any ill affect on today's performance. And I am going to have some fun.

Added bonus to this event is the full staff stage reset. Once again "Thank You!" to the volunteers. This is the first event that I have participated in that didn't involve shooters taping/resetting the stage. Wow. This is a luxury I could get use to.

Dan, Jeff and myself are once again blessed with a great squad. We have another Jason with us today from the Master Blaster team and he was a great addition to our sequence of cheering each other on. Not to mention he is an amazing shooter. Several times throughout the match we exchanged ideas about stage planning and often times we saw the brilliance in each others ideas. Jay was a pleasure to shoot with all day. Great to watch him destroy stages and great to banter with during the down times. I look forward to shooting with him again in the future. Our old friend Sean was shooting with us also and he is always fun to joke around with and get advice from. We also had an older gentleman in our squad who totes the largest revolver I have seen in quite some time. Several comments were heard throughout the day including but not limited to "Accuracy isn't a problem when you can touch the target with your barrel," and "You can use that for a cane when you run out of ammo." The shooter was a typical competitor with a great sense of humor. He was wicked out going and not afraid to talk to anybody. We laughed with him all day long. Jay, Jeff and myself are all in the Limited Optics Division. Dan is running Carry Optics.

The fourth stage we shoot starts with a single target and then two sets of two targets with a no-shoot sandwiched between each. Then retreat a couple feet, blast a close one and continue on. I drew and blasted away, darting along as fast as I could then unload and show clear, hammer down and holster. I follow the RO to score the targets which were not pretty when I got back to the beginning. One hit on a No-shoot, two, three no-shoots, four, five no-shoots hits. I was skimming half the bullet holes through the white targets. They were close but they were definitely hits on no-shoot targets. No sense in trying to deny it. I should have slowed down just a whisker when trying to shoot such a tight target at distance but hey, I'm still doing great in my eyes. Its not going to help my score but it's not going to ruin my day either.

Come noon time we have run through five of the ten stages and the range falls silent. Its time for grub. Today's serving includes a sandwich and chips from Jersey Mike's. You can't go wrong with that. The half hour break is much welcomed. The sun has come to full blaze and the thermometer is hovering around 90 degrees. We are blessed with a slight breeze but we are still in what is essentially a sand pit. Its hot.

The last stage is pretty cool with a tunnel that the shooter has to crouch through and a window in it they have to shoot out. All of the stages were amazing. Nothing crazy complex. There were some stages that tripped up some shooters but generally the stages were all pretty straight forward. We finished up with the remaining stage by about 4pm.

Today, I have shot my personal best. I am very happy. I didn't know it at the time but I ended

up finishing 66th in the Limited Optics division out of 103. Master Blaster Jason was also in my division and ended up placing 58th. The man for me to chase today was by far Mr. Jeff Fifield who placed 48th also in our Limited Optics division. Dan finished great at 77th out of 133 in Carry Optics. The sum of all of Jeff's stages was a full 50 seconds faster than mine. That's five seconds per stage. How long was a fumbling with that magazine on the first stage? It all adds up. Not to mention my Charlies were his Alphas. My goal for today was to finish in the top half of my division. To this measurement, I have failed but in the broader scope I have achieved far more victories. Stage planning and execution have become significantly easier for me. I engaged every target in the whole match. This may sound stupid to some shooters but man am I happy about it. My "top-half of the scoring bracket" goal will stand for now but I feel far from a failure. Today was a win.

In hindsight, no, USPSA is not a team sport but yes, we do have a team. And a damn good one at that. We help each other to be the best shooters we can be. When we blunder, we pick each other up and get each other back on track. And this isn't just with the folks that wear the same jerseys. Master Blaster Jay was a great addition to our team today. He may not be flying the same colors as we are but he was a great asset to me in several of the stage plans. He was quick to offer his Dewalt fan and umbrella when the sun became over-bearing and he was great for laughs all day long. Every event I go to, my teams gets a little bigger. More handshakes, more smiles, more names to remember and more fun to have. My wife said it perfectly. The shooting brings people in, the shooters bring people back.

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