Stages were devious and challenging. Synthetic “head” of bomb-vest wearing “terrorist” has popped back up after being shot down at close range, as shooter engages more distant Pepper Poppers.

With a heady mix of pluck and preparation, a new venue debuts in IDPA with a state championship… and pulls it off spectacularly.

My first thought was, "Let me get this straight: we’re gonna shoot the Florida State IDPA Championship at someplace called the Wyoming Antelope Club?"

Yup. It turned out I did have it straight. And so, bless ‘em, did the host organization, which set ambitiously high standards for their first big IDPA match…and succeeded brilliantly.

Author vainly attempts to retain his FL State SSR championship with S&W 686 and Remington +P .38 ammo, but that title was earned by Cliff Walsh. Outside, torrential rain is pouring unnoticed onto a sheltering roof.

The incongruous name for the venue in St. Petersburg, Florida came from a couple of well-to-do local hunters who, many years ago, decided their annual trek to the namesake state to hunt pronghorn would go better if they had their very own rifle range on which to practice. The range took on a life of its own, morphing into a gun club with a huge membership and hosting many disciplines.

Florida is a narrow state, but a long one, about 350 miles from Jacksonville to Miami, and few IDPA clubs there have large enough a membership base to staff a really large sanctioned match. It’s necessary to pull in volunteers from other clubs elsewhere in the Sunshine State and even Georgia, and given the geographic spread, this proved to be a daunting task for even the famously capable state coordinator, Lance Biddle. The last State Championship had been run – successfully – at the Central Florida Rifle & Pistol Club in Orlando, but manpower shortages had kept that club from bidding the following year, and another club that hoped to run the event couldn’t gather enough personnel, either. As a result, there had been no 2008 Florida State IDPA Championship.

Interest in IDPA had developed at Wyoming Antelope Club, and the organization had approached IDPA with a proposal to sponsor a 2009 state shoot. After a thorough review, Biddle and National HQ gave their approval, and the newly minted host club immediately kicked into gear to make it happen.

Most stages involved imperfect light. Note muzzle flash of Blazer .45 hardball round as Five-Gun Master Jon Strayer shoots his Springfield TGO 1911 from behind replicated cover.

The Club Prepares

Prior to the match, the club spent half a million dollars in range upgrades. This included roofing the outdoor shooting bays, enough for a dozen courses of fire. A couple of months before the shoot, Biddle ran an SO course for about two dozen new safety officers. They were joined by members of the Florida West Coast Defensive Pistol Club, one of the first groups chartered by IDPA, and now headquartered at the Antelope Club. Several SO-qualified shooters from other clubs volunteered to help. Contingents from other disciplines at Wyoming Antelope Club volunteered to help with traffic control, parking, and food preparation. Biddle estimates that some sixty personnel were involved in making the State Championship run like clockwork. Charles Kibert was named match director, Dan Bernard was chief safety officer, and Brian Boyer was appointed as chief stat officer. By the time the calendar rolled around to match weekend, the whole crew was working like a well-oiled machine.

The host club welcomed shooters enthusiastically.

CoFs

For a first-time major match, these fledgling hosts sure put together some challenging courses of fire. The overhead protection gave a stark light-and-shadow effect when the sun was shining, and cast some degree of darkness over most of the targets during the wet weather that predominated over the weekend of the match. Well, no one had ever promised us a rose garden, or a "gunfight at high noon."

The courses of fire were brilliantly laid out, demanding, and relevant. In one long house-clearing, the shooter finished taking cover at a door leading outside to a large, open atrium, with some relatively long shots at what looked like awfully small steel targets to finish up. In another stage, we opened a "hotel door" to face a Mumbai-style massacre in progress in the "hotel lobby." Another had us performing a head-shot on the plastic, safe-for-close-range knockdown "head" of a target wearing a bomb vest, and then immediately transitioning to moving, ducking, and distance bad guy accomplices.

Airborne spent brass is visible as Chris Christian attacks the Standards with S&W M&P .45. He took 1st Expert in CDP.

In what some considered the most inventive stage, we were cast as air marshals having coffee back in the galley when an airplane hijacking went down, and had to roll a "beverage cart" in front of us as we shot our way down the aisle of the "jetliner," making our way to a cabin door which we had to open and then quickly neutralize the last two targets. A carryover from a previous Florida State Championship put the shooter in a rocking boat, from which platform he or she had to retrieve gun and ammo out of a tackle box and engage alligator targets among elaborate props including trees and, yes, pink flamingoes.

Creative use was made throughout of gravity turners, movers, and knockdowns. Our hosts had invested money as well as time and ingenuity in setting up the stages they put before us. There were a couple of challenging Standard Exercises, one involving bank lobby-like distances and another requiring both dominant hand only and non-dominant hand only shooting.

Through it all, the shooters appreciated the fact that the "overheads" had kept the torrential rain off them. They were also grateful the unsung heroes among the host club members who had stood out there unprotected during what seemed at times like monsoons to guide them to the parking lots as they drove between stages on the many Wyoming Antelope Club bays.

Attendee Appreciation

When it was over and the 153 shooters were all chowing down on the excellent food at the awards ceremony, all anyone seemed to talk about was how much they had enjoyed the match. No "Range Nazis," for one thing. The range staff had all lived up to what might be called "the three Fs" for such an event: they were Firm, but Fair, and Friendly.

Hard-working IDPA area coordinator Lance Biddle also earned 1st Sharpshooter in SSR.

The competition was intense, and some splendid shooting was recorded. Jeff DeGracia won ESP, and also had the best overall final score of the match…and captured the Most Accurate Shooter plaque with only 32 points down over an extremely tough twelve-stage course. That’s something worth remembering the next time you hear someone say, "You can’t shoot IDPA for accuracy and still be fast enough to win."

Deon Martin won SSP, and also High Law Enforcement. Shannon Smith captured the CDP championship. IPSC grandmaster Cliff Walsh handily won SSR (yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as crossover) and Robert Briggs emerged as ESR Champion. The State Champion Lady was Gail Pepin, with Jose Garcia winning the title for Senior, Stef Hobson taking Distinguished Senior, and Andrew Casavant capturing the Junior Championship.

En route to capturing 2009 IDPA Florida State Ladies’ Champion title, Gail Pepin fires her Glock 34 from behind cover. Arrow shows spent casing; distant Pepper Popper is beginning to fall from the hit.

The 2009 Florida State IDPA Championship was, quite simply, a splendid match. It wrote a chapter into the history of the International Defensive Pistol Association which proved that a determined and committed club, even one fairly new to this sport, can go from standing start to high speed in a short time if it has the organizational skills and, above all, the dedicated members who are serious about Making It Happen.

Kudos to all involved. This writer for one hopes to be at their next sanctioned match. The same group has bid to sponsor it next year, and seems to be on a fast track. Stay tuned for dates, etc. at www.idpa.com.