Why? Let's be sure the match is for the shooters rather than stage designers getting caught up in excessive creativity.
We put on more interesting and complex stages for several reasons, but again a large part of this is to fill the time with a bit more shooting rather than having folks burn through five simple stages and then stand around to get their chance at the shoot house.
If I can take the opportunity to run a standards stage with four or five starts in one bay, that's like getting four or five mini-stages in one. Yes, it takes a little longer to do that, but folks are waiting anyway. If I can present a few stages with steel and movers to reset (which takes a bit of time, always) that's a good opportunity for folks to practice some things they'll see at larger matches.
If those sorts of slightly more time-intensive things help manage the flow of the squads so they don't stack up badly in one place, mores the better!
Other clubs also use shoot houses. They do not have to be a bottleneck.
Ours has a particular bay plan that permits 360 deg. shooting. Therefore the entire squad waits two berms back as the shooter and SO work through it. This means we have a set way of running it for safety sake (and for a couple of other reasons) that doesn't lend itself to the more common ways of speeding up a stage. We've worked on streamlining it for years and have our process down pretty well, but short of abandoning our particular approach (which our shooters seem to love!) and even doing a fair bit of earth-moving, we are where we are and we've made the best of it we're able.
You're always welcomed to shoot with us any time you're in the area if you'd like to run it and then offer your critique!
Again, look critically at the stage design and make it about the shooters rather than about the designer.
Lolz!
Thanks, but I AM the stage designer (along with a couple of others) and I can assure you that a great deal of time and effort goes into making a balanced and challenging spread of COFs each month, for the benefit of the shooters. It might be awfully tempting to throw out a bunch of quick-n-dirty stages so I can get home in a hurry, but that's not why I was asked to be MD, and as long as we're still getting the smiles and kudos from our shooters I plan to keep on keepin' on.
At one club, with increasing IPDA participation, the above became a necessity and the stage designers refocused with noticeable (and much appreciated) match efficiency -- without any shooters feeling they were blasted through any stages or that the match experience was compromised.
I try to shoot a fair number of matches at other clubs, and work on staff at 3-6 major matches each year. If there's anything I can bring home to improve efficiency and match experience, I absolutely do try to do so. Constant improvement is the goal!
