ICORE Time!

At home club "O", Your Correspondent was enlisted to some degree for the purpose of helping to set up an ICORE program there.
ICORE stands for the International Confederation of Revolver Enthusiasts. It's not very old, from about 1991 if I recall correctly, and may be taken as an offshoot of USPSA/IPSC gone six-shot-neutral.
The rulebook bears a close resemblance to the USPSA book and that's fine. There's no need to reinvent the best wheel in the business.
Tacky pun, but appropriate.
For Your Correspondent, though, the hardest part isn't stage design or even soliciting volunteer help. It's parts.
As the new guy in town, only having had a key to the joint for six months, the props are the the big question, followed by the bays' limitations. Several of O's bays have non-shootable sidewalls. They're bulletproof and safe, of course, but aren't dirt or some other material able to soak up significant numbers of bullets, so stages have to be carefully laid out to avoid directing fire into them. It's only a big deal if you've been spoiled by high, encompassing dirt berms that allow a wide field of fire... as has Yours Truly.
Then, despite having shot at the USPSA matches at O for several years, it doesn't mean that I have a good grasp of the inventory of available and good-to-go props: walls, brackets, poppers, and all of the other things that go into building a good match.
As a perusal of previous posts here will prove, Your Correspondent naturally set to making wall panels and folders as soon as financial authorization from the club potentates was handed down.
This may be hard to understand for a person who hasn't spent nearly four decades making walls and standing them up as a daily engagement, but there just didn't seem to be enough visual barricades on hand. Like ammunition in the gun, there's really no such thing as enough for the proposed task at hand.
So, the inventory is taking a nice rise, and four field courses were finally laid out that allow the best use of the spaces available, and then the whole match-making process was gotten underway.
The best news of all, for me, is that my program director co-host is happy to handle the registration, signup, and scoring, and in return, I merely have to get there and see to the building of the four field courses and one classifier stage.
Understand, dear reader, that this is feels almost like stealing candy from a baby. Program Director's doing the dirty work and I get to frolic in the fields with screw gun and mallet- an excellent deal from my perspective.
As the point man in the information program, though, I get the questions. Boy, do I get questions. It's an easy guess as to which is the most common to come down the e-mail pipe:
"Can I shoot my auto?"
Normally, I don't have the stomach for turning eager participants away, but there are some rules even the most rogue of MDs must follow, and let's face it... ICORE really, really wants to see revolvers out there.
My solution has been to open my safe to my appellants.
My 686 has been in the hands of SS Hashenburgers as noted in previous posts here. With it went my L-frame Comp III speedloaders and carriers. In return Phil and I got a fairly enthused e-mail from SS proclaiming herself the "Junior Revolver Enthusiast".
Given SS's predilection for and near-master level skill at the 1911 platform (where is that reclassification!), this is a near-seismic shift.
"I haven't taken to it that much!" protested SS last Sunday upon receipt of the rest of the loaner match gear, and you may be assured that her regular sponsors need not fear the 1911 going all rusty anytime soon. Or, ever.
But it will be fun to see the innate talent and piercing focus that SS uses to advance up the charts in Single Stack and CDP being brought to bear in the new and alien field of round-gunning.
Elsewhere, other sixguns from the stash have been proffered to other bottom-feeding friends in hopes of engaging them for even a single match. CDP expert Mr. L. was approached but has a conflict. Fireman Mike is starting to give that dusty old 686 of his a thought or two.
What's more, the PPC boss at Club O, and a number of his cowboy cohorts, have pledged participation as well. Given PPC's insistence upon X-ring accuracy every single shot, the tough ICORE D-1 target's similar demand for alphas-or-bust should be an easy transition. Just pick up the pace on the refills, lads, and you'll shine just fine.
This is all great fun for Yours Truly. There are actually three sources of stimulation here:
One is just plain putting on a match. It may sound crazy to regular shooters, but there's every bit as much satisfaction in putting on a good match as making a perfect run.
A while back, at the end of one of our USPSA matches at Club N, a gen-u-ine master whose name you'd recognize here in the Upper Midwest grabbed my arm and told me with eye-a-gleaming that we were putting on "state-level matches every month". If I'd beaten him by ten points at the Area match I couldn't have been more gratified, and the same applied to my stage-director co-hosts when I shared this with them.
Another friend told me she'd drive anywhere to go a match I was putting on. Once again, I owe an apology for rank immodesty, but hearing that sort of thing is a rush bordering on illegal.
Second, in the case at hand, is being the FNG- the new guy at an established and successful club. These guys in all kinds of disciplines are good, and get serious turnouts. I'm the rube just dusting himself off from the fall from the turnip truck in these precincts. Nervous? You bet. Some pretty experienced eyes are watching.
But, most fun of all with this ICORE thing is that it's something new and unusual, and a number of my friends are going to go outside of their regular match comfort zones just to see what it's like to go all-revolver. Some of them, as mentioned above, are going to have to work at "new" stuff and take some chances at not being a good as they are every other Sunday.
Or, so they wrongly think.
Talent, skill, and work will always tell. We'll see when the results come down.
There won't be any big embarrassment, I promise.
And, if the machinations turn out at all well, I will have gotten a really giant basket of grins to stash in my bike's bags for the smiling ride home.