Last year, I was asked to work as Range Master for the 2023 “Battle at the Peak” Colorado State USPSA Championship at the Pikes Peak Gun Club outside of Colorado Springs; when asked to return for this year’s match, I jumped at the chance.
For the second year in a row, USPSA Eastern Colorado Section Coordinator Germaine Adams has successfully demonstrated tremendous skill, leadership and attention to detail as the match director of the Colorado State USPSA Championship. Like last year, she led a composite team of solid range officers from her own local club and several other clubs throughout the state, as well as a few out-of-state folks. Borrowing props from three different clubs, and using stage designs from seven different stage designers, she and her team put together another great match, despite significant coordination, planning and weather challenges.
STAGES
This year’s stages used “Colorado Animals” as a theme for stage names. All the stages were high round count, with a good mix of technical shots and fast shooting. Because of the large number of stage designers, the stages were diverse and unique. There were few moving targets—one swinger, one bobber and one Texas star—but plenty of challenging shots.
There were plenty of options on how to shoot each stage, including Stage 4 with a 25-yard dash between the first three positions, designed by Germaine while she was preparing for knee replacement surgery (not sure what she was thinking there).
Some of the other challenges included small poppers at 35 yards, steel in front of no-shoots, and lots (and lots) of hard-cover targets. Out of the 61 hard-cover targets (not counting targets masked by no-shoots), about half were Zebra or Tuxedo targets, including the 14 Zebra targets on Stage 11. Germaine and her build crew painted a ton of hard cover, and we certainly used a lot of black pasters while shooting the match.
STAFF
The match was lighter staffed than we would have preferred, with only two range officers on stages who should arguably have had three. We also had a handful of staff members who were not certified range officers. Despite this, the staff did a great job providing fair, accurate and friendly service to the shooters.
In addition to the local crew, we had a couple of key players from outside Colorado. Range Master Mike Howell from my home club (Wyoming Antelope Club in Clearwater, Florida) came out to work as Stats lead. Despite the lack of WiFi at the range, he was able to sync stage tablets regularly and post scores online (in compliance with new USPSA rule 9.11.2.1) to meet the paperless scoring requirement. It was also useful to have Mike as another range master on the ground to give advice. (For example, “Hi there, it looks like you are doing a unilateral gun swap. Do you want me to call the Range Master for you?”)
We were also fortunate to have Range Master Candidate Darren Devine from Wyoming as Assistant Range Master. He made all the calls and conducted most of the interaction with the staff and shooters. My observation was that he was accurate with his rulings, as well as accommodating and gracious with both groups.
He also experienced an unusual series of calibration calls. We received eight calls for calibration, with two determined as Range Equipment Failure (reshoots without calibration). Of the six calibration challenges that Darren shot, three were scored as misses (that is, the steel in question fell both times that he shot it). On the other three calibration challenges, the steel fell the first time he shot it, but after reset failed to fall the second time (despite his hits being centered closely in the calibration zone). Three out of six is a significant number of times for this to occur, and resulted in three shooters getting reshoots instead of Mikes on steel (based on the new and revised “do it twice” calibration procedure).
WEATHER AND THE REBUILD
At last year’s match, we had a weather event that I referred to as “of Biblical proportions.” We watched the clouds brew over the mountains and march into the match, with rain and hail and wind that turned into a binding dust storm that knocked down walls and delayed the match for hours. Despite assurances from the Colorado crowd that “that kind of thing should never happen again this year,” it did.
On Friday night, with one combined staff-paid shooter squad left to complete the match, we got slammed with a big thunderstorm, with plenty of rain, wind, lightning and hail that broke walls and blew targets and barrels across the range. Naturally, the worse stage hit was the one that had to be rebuilt to finish shooting that night. Stage #9 had two unique stacked target arrays and multiple walls and barrels, creating tight and specific shooting views. Every target was blown off the sticks. Walls and barrels were flattened.
As soon as we could get started repairing the stage, the assigned Stage Chief Range Officer, Eli George, pulled out his phone and used his carefully documented set of pictures and the remaining fault lines and stands to start reassembling the stage. Eli and Stage Range Officer Tristan Sher, with the assistance of a few resilient staff and volunteers were able put the stage back together and get the last few shooters through their match. We always direct chief range officers to do this kind of preparation and documentation in case of disaster and, in this instance, it was executed perfectly.
BREAKDOWN
Every match has two sets of rules or obligations, the USPSA rules, and whatever constraints or obligations the match has to the range or supporting clubs. For this match, because we used props and gear from three different clubs and the range required that we empty all the bays immediately after the match, we had a pretty dynamic and complicated breakdown requirement.
After waiving the arbitration period (based on Stats getting the scores scrubbed and posted), we asked the shooters to help break down the stages they finished on. With terrific volunteer effort, the stages were quickly broken down and the borrowed gear loaded up for transport to home ranges. By the time we conducted awards, the range was completely restored.
AWARDS AND PRIZE TABLE
The match recognized division and category winners, as well as State Champions (Colorado residents) and stage winners. For this match, it turned out that all the division champions were also Colorado residents, making them both match and state champions (no Frenchmen, New Zealanders or Texans to complicate the awards).
For prizes, despite being a relatively small USPSA Level 2 “Trophy” match with 223 shooters, this match had a large prize table of randomly awarded donated prizes. Germaine and sponsor coordinator Joel Whitington arranged for 12 guns, and about $21,000 worth of cash, sights, ammunition and other gun products from some generous sponsors, (including $9,000 worth of product fromTitle Sponsor Armscor International). It was bountiful.
Sponsors included Armscor International, C-More Systems, Dawson Precision, EGW, Henning Group, Holosun, Machine Gun Tours, Magnum Shooting North, Red Dirt USA, Red Hill Tactical, Reid Realty, SDS Guns, Shadow Systems Corp, Shooters Connection, Spartan Defense, Stan Chen Custom, X-Treme Bullets and Freedom Munitions.
2024 COLORADO STATE USPSA CHAMPIONSHIP LEADERBOARD
- Carry Optics: State Champion Joseph Wishel (1585.7228), High Lady Brennah Gaston (1272.6534)
- Limited: State Champion Brandyn Ness (1643.6120), High Lady Patrice Sutter (795.1945)
- Limited Optics: State Champion Kelsey Clark (1562.9817), High Lady Kara Hall (1015.8475)
- Pistol-Caliber Carbine: State Champion Curtis Brotherston (1607.7667), High Lady Diana Driscoll (1281.7193)
- Open: State Champion Bridger Havens (1573.7854)
- Single Stack: State Champion Henning Wallgren (1643.3735)
- Production: State Champion Jonah Pres (1589.3965)
You can see the full results of the 2024 Colorado State USPSA Championship at the USPSA website.
The 2025 Colorado State USPSA Championship is scheduled for next summer at Pikes Peak Gun Club with Germaine Adams as match director for the third time. I am confident that this will be another great match, but I believe it can probably use some more staff and shooters. I strongly recommend working next year’s match and also shooting it.
Article from the September/October 2024 issue of USPSA’s magazine.
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