The provision of a shooting order is often an issue with some squads. A squad will arrive at the stage, report to the RO and hand in their score sheets/labels. Now who will be the first shooter?? It must be fair to every shooter in the squad. In the interest of fairness IROA has a procedure for assigning a certain shooting order. For demonstration we will take a 16 stage match and 8 person squads.

The principle is quite simple: on stage X shooter X will be the first shooter, the others follow along the squad list supplied by the match organizer. If there are more shooters than stage numbers we move to the top and keep on counting. In this specific example on stage #10 shooter #10 is supposed to start. As there are only 8 shooters in this squad we count again from the top down which makes shooter #2 the 10th shooter.

So far no problem, this was the easy part. Now we have a "no-show" in our list, how to handle it? Just ignore the noshow and only count the shooters present.

Let’s make this visible:

Squad X Stage 10

As the match goes on we have the occasional disqualification (DQ). After Stage 10 they go to stage 9, so shooter # 9 needs to start. Again we ignore the DQ and the no-show and only count the shooters present.

This looks like this:

Squad X Stage 9

So the principle is quite easy – only count the shooters present, disregard all no-shows and DQs. This system works but only under one condition: it has to be executed throughout the match at all stages. As soon as one RO deviates from this procedure (for whatever reason) it goes wrong. One commonly made mistake is to count all shooters on the list, including the no-shows and DQs. In the last example this leads to a situation where shooter 5 (Felicity Fifth) will be the first to start on stage 11, 12 AND 13. Do the calculation for yourself and see. It is obvious that this is not the right way to go.

There are other circumstances which require changes to the order. If for example, stages 6 and 7 are set to be run "hot" (one shooter reloads after 6 and shoots 7), all following stages are effectively re-numbered e.g. 8 becomes 7, 9 becomes 8 and so on. In this way all shooters will be treated fairly. Also, in many matches we have a small number of shooters on "speed tickets". When a speed ticket competitor arrives on your range inform them that as soon as they advise the RO that they are ready, they will take the next start in the rotation. In addition, in multi-day matches we often see shooters with "special" schedules. These shooters are on different squads on various days. They should always shoot last with the original squad completing the shooting order as described above.

This system is useful on all levels, but it is advised to use it from Level III upwards. The RM has the final autdority to decide whether tdis system will be used or not.

A skilled Stats official will be able to assist Range Officers by providing squad lists which have been produced for each stage with the competitors listed in the IROA Shooting Order. If such lists are followed on all stages and are updated on a daily basis to reflect no-shows and disqualified competitors, the IROA Shooting Order is made really simple and will be correctly applied without confusion.

IROA Shooting Order is an appendix in the IROA Member Handbook which is Copyright © 2012 International Practical Shooting Confederation