Film Review: Wake Action Pistol, Second December Match

So last Monday, I shot the second Wake Action Pistol match for December. Now, as the stage designer, you’d think I’d know the stages and their briefs and procedures front to back. But in the middle of a match, it all goes out the window.

So, here’s the video:

Stage 2: Trying to be nice to the other RO on my squad, I volunteered to shoot each stage first, thinking that surely I know each of these stages by now. Maybe that was true when I was in a Production state of mind, but switching to a 1911 (i.e. Single Stack/CDP) threw me for a loop. This was a 16 round stage that I should have shot with one reload, but instead decided to do two in the fifteen seconds I took while loading and making read to think through the stage. Lesson: when short on time, figure out the reloads first.

Stage 3: Straightforward stage with mandatory reloads, so the order wasn’t too different between the M&P and 1911. What changed this time is that I was feeling cold, so I moved more slowly. Less aggressive on explosively leaving the first position and moving to the first magazine once the gun was in my hand. Lesson: always move explosively and with a sense of urgency.

Stage 4: Drew slightly slower than when I was shooting the M&P but had slightly faster splits, resulting in two charlies. Balance of speed and accuracy and all that. Mostly surprised by the issue with dropping the magazine on the reload. Lesson: have a sense of urgency, even on the short stages, and make sure the mag drops during the reload.

Stage 1: Drew much slower than the first time, despite starting with my hand on the gun. Something about having a shorter distance to go made me more complacent about covering the distance. Also, again, forgot to do the reload right despite having designed the stage and shot it once before. Required reloading before going through the door, which I totally forgot. That cost me about three seconds. Otherwise, even having an extra reload over Production, it didn’t cost that much time since it was done on the run.

Overall, I had the least things wrong with this match of any I’ve shot in a long time. Pretty happy with how things went, and everything that went wrong were RO things, not shooter things. When the time comes to settle down and focus up and shoot my game, I was in the right state of mind. Now, to replicate that on match day…