Brock's Gap IDPA Match Structure

Every Brock’s Gap IDPA match typically consists of six separate “stages” or “courses of fire” (COFs). Each stage is either a “scenario” stage or a “standards” stage. A scenario stage is based on some potential real-life encounter that could challenge your skill in armed self-defense. For example, you may be told that as you return home from work late one night, you find that bad guys have your wife and kids and are ransacking the house. When they see you, they go on the attack. You must use your gun to take out the bad guys without injuring your loved ones. Most IDPA stages are scenario-based.

A standards stage is designed to test some element of shooting skill as opposed to representing a real-life threat. For example, you may be required first to engage an array of three targets using only your strong (dominant) hand, then reengage the same targets using only your weak (non-dominant) hand.

A COF may require that you engage targets while moving forward, backwards, or sideways or from around, over, or under barricades. These COFs are not designed to be physically challenging, but they do provide you with the opportunity to practice shooting from unusual positions.

At Brock’s Gap, we have ten shooting bays that are available for setting up COFs. We will generally have each stage of the match set up in a different bay, which reduces both the amount of time it takes to shoot a match and the amount of time the shooters have to spend waiting around to shoot.

Competitors shoot the match as part of a squad comprising 10-12 shooters. The number of squads will depend on the number of shooters who register.  Shooters are able to choose a squad as part of the registration process. The squads stay together throughout the match, moving from stage to stage until all the stages in the match are completed.  At least two certified and experienced safety officers are assigned to each squad. These folks can take care of most of the timer and scorekeeping duties, leaving the target resetting and pasting to the other shooters in the squad. Even if it’s your first match, we expect you to pitch in with target pasting and resetting. It’ll help you understand what’s going on, and it will make the match move along a lot faster for everyone. 

At all IDPA matches, as well as many others, it's important to arrive early.  At Brock's Gap IDPA, we recommend arriving 45-60 minutes before the match starts.  This gives you time to check in, get geared up, and have a look at the stages.

Your first stop when you get to the range should be the check-in desk.  Here is where you pay your fee (remember your first time is free), confirm the information you provided when you registered, and confirm your squad assignment.  If you changed your  mind after you registered, this is when you can change your division, squad, etc.  After you check in, you can take your gear to your starting bay and begin getting ready.

Approximately 15 minutes before the match, there is a safety briefing for all shooters.  Just like the airlines, even though shooters may have heard the briefing before, we conduct a briefing before every match.  We remind everybody about safety rules and go over emergency procedures (that we hope to never use).  This is also when we make important announcements about the match and about upcoming special matches, classes, workdays, etc.

When your squad arrives at a stage, the safety officer will give you all a “walkthrough” that explains the COF. You will be told where and how to start the COF and how to proceed from there. If you have any questions, you can ask them now. If you’re unsure what you’re supposed to do, it’s better to clear it up now rather than wait until it’s your turn to shoot. 

All our matches primarily use the official IDPA targets. Sometimes, portions of a target may be painted black to represent “hard cover.” Any round fully in hard cover doesn’t count. Some targets have open hands painted on them. These represent unarmed bystanders and are referred to as “non-threats.” Hits on a non-threat target earn a time penalty. We sometimes use steel plates or steel “poppers” that fall when struck. Sometimes paper targets are mounted on swingers that require the shooter to engage a target while it moves back and forth. Other targets pop up then disappear or turn then disappear, or move laterally. IDPA is not bulls-eye shooting (not that there’s anything wrong with that), so we try to offer a variety of shooting challenges to keep it interesting. 

You may not think about it when you come to your first match, but a lot of folks volunteer a lot of their time and expend a considerable amount of energy designing and setting up the COFs for every match we shoot. At Brock’s Gap, we have the luxury of being able to come to the range during the week to set up for the Saturday matches. This allows us to design more elaborate stages with more complicated scenarios than would be the case if everything had to be done the morning of a match. But that also means there’s a lot of stuff to be taken down and stored when the match is over. We appreciate any help we can get. With enough hands, we can have the range cleared in a very short time. When your safety officer says we’re through with a stage, please pitch in to get everything taken down and put away. 

We appreciate that, when the game is over, you want to know the results right away. You don’t want to play a game today and not know how you fared in your division and classification for 2 or 3 days. That’s why we try to make sure the match results are posted to the Practiscore website and are available for your review immediately after the match. If you are unfamiliar with Practiscore and with accessing match results, ask a match official or a fellow competitor to bring you up to speed.