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[lawboy]

I live in an areas where there are more IDPA and USPSA matches within an hour of me each month than I can shoot and I tend to shoot 3-5 a month, which is less than half of what is available. I shoot a lot at a large club that draws 100-120 shooters to each match and we have seen in the last year that we are getting even more, many of those are completely new to the sport. 10-20+ brand new shooters at a -stage match REALLY slows things down because the ROs have to do a lot of teaching and extra safety tutoring with these shooters. We are talking 1-2 hours added to the match. A side effect is that the stage designs are becoming overly simple to cater to the new shooters and to help speed up the match. That sucks.
To resolve this issue, last year the club started mandating that new shooters have to attend a separate introduction course/match held on a different weekend before they are allowed to shoot the regular match. I am not sure how this is going as I am not involved in it.
Now, there is another club not too far away that is closely connected to our club. It is a smaller match but I have noticed lately that many new shooters are coming there and getting started and later showing up a the larger match. If they have shot at the smaller club we do not make them go through the introductory course. It is becoming a kind of feeder system and I think it might be worthwhile to actually make that arrangement official and do away with the introductory course thing. Are any other clubs running a "feeder" system of any kind and if so, how does it work?

Edited by lawboy, 28 June 2011 - 07:31 AM.