Our First USPSA Match

A month ago Christy and I participated in our first USPSA match in Temple, Texas. The match was held by our friends at Temple Gun Club. We generally shoot either Steel Challenge or IDPA with them and they always have challenging yet fun matches. Since we are so comfortable shooting there we decided it would be a good place to shoot our first USPSA match. We also had quite a few of our friends attending so we knew this was going to be a great day.

Running to the next shooting position

USPSA stands for United States Practical Shooting Association. For those of you that are not familiar with this shooting sport it is all about speed, speed and more SPEED! Well, to truly be successful you do have to be accurate but just be fast doing it! You move as quick as you can from shooting position to shooting position and you are encouraged to reload while on the move as this is faster than doing a slide lock reload. So, in theory, you should never run empty and you always have a full mag at each shooting position.

You are presented with a stage and you are permitted to shoot the stage freestyle which means you can engage the targets in the order that you choose. It is interesting to see the many different ways the same stage can be shot by different competitors.

Shooting in the open

This is somewhat of a departure from what we are used to since we mainly shoot IDPA [International Defensive Pistol Association] matches. There are some big differences between how you shoot IDPA and USPSA. In IDPA the course of fire is laid out for you and it has to be shot in that particular order, you also have to shoot from cover and you cannot reload on the move unless you are behind cover.

Typically you do run the gun to slide lock. If the course of fire does call for a tac [tactical] reload, you cannot drop the loaded mag that you removed from the gun. If you do, it's a procedural. IDPA is more about accuracy with speed blended in. In both sports, the faster that you can shoot accurately, the better.

In preparing for the match we were asking our friends who shoot both sports for tips. They said the biggest challenge was to pretty much forget everything you know about IDPA when shooting USPSA. Boy, were they right! Now, we had to get our gear in order. Christy's choice was easy when it came to her firearm since she shoots the Springfield XDm 5.25 normally. This is an ideal gun when it comes to crossing over between the two sports.

Running and gunning with my 1911

For me, the choice wasn't as easy. I normally compete with a 9mm single stack 1911 from STI called the Trojan. I have a magwell on the gun and 10 round magazines. This is a great gun for IDPA but I think I would have been better off shooting my Sig P226 Tac-Ops which would have been better for quicker reloads. From my experience, reloads with a high capacity magazine are faster than with a single stack 1911 mag. I know this is blasphemy for all of you 1911 lovers out there but I had to admit this out loud! hahaha

Setting up our mag holders and holsters was a breeze since we are using our competition belts from Tuff Products and our current holsters and mag holders. Luckily we both have enough mags for our guns since there is no limit on how many you can have on you. We may have to get more mag holders in the future that would be dedicated for usage in USPSA competitions but for now what we had on hand worked fine.

Shooting between the rainstorms

We both shot the match the best we could, and aside from of us both having a couple of brain malfunctions, we did as well as expected for our first time. We weren't really concerned with trying to beat others as much as we were just out there to have a great time with our friends and fellow competitors. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, it rained on us nearly the entire match! At times it turned into more than just a light rain. It wasn't anything that a couple of waterproof jackets couldn't cure.

If you haven't tried USPSA yet we cannot recommend it enough. Even if you have another form of competitive shooting that you participate in or you are just getting into competitive shooting you will have a blast shooting a USPSA match!



Reloading while running to the next shooting position

Speaking of having a blast, we had such a great time a month ago that we decided to give USPSA a go again this past weekend. The decision to shoot this match was made at the last minute. We were attending a fundraiser on Saturday night for a friend of ours running for Constable when I brought up shooting the match to Christy. Ironically enough, just a few minutes later, we received a text from our friend John asking us if we were interested in shooting the match since he was going to.

As always we were now faced with the task of preparing our gear and cleaning our guns [well, I cleaned our guns] before the match the next day. As the name of our blog implies, a couple that shoots together means there is twice as much to get done and prepare.

We put our competition belts together and Christy's choice of gun was simple while I debated on whether to use the 1911 or the P226. I chose the 1911 again which turned out to be the wrong choice since I have new mags that I had not broken in yet. New single stack 9mm 1911 mags are not the best choice when it comes to doing speed reloads if the slide is not locked back. Every mag change was a challenge because of this.

Christy did very well [as always] and, despite struggling with a few select steel targets, she was High Lady for the match! I am proud of her, as always but I still take credit since I cleaned her gun and our mags! hahaha I did not get much sleep after packing our gear the night before plus it takes us a little over an hour to get to Temple Gun Club's range so we had to get up a lot earlier compared to when we do local matches. Four hours of sleep was definitely NOT enough since I was struggling throughout the match with fatigue and gun problems.

We were hoping the weather would be a little drier for our next USPSA match and it definitely was. Drier and hotter! This is the kind of weather we expect in Texas in the summer time. All in all we are both glad that we decided to do the match because we had an awesome time, learned a lot and enjoyed the camaraderie of our friends. Before we go shoot another match I am going to make sure l get enough sleep so I am functioning at 100%! As proud as I am of Christy I cannot have her beating me every match and I will eventually run out of excuses as to why she does beat me. Did I mention I cleaned her gun?