Team Competitions

[IainWR]

Hi Christel

I'm also slightly fishing for the exact question here, so just wondering if you have grasped that some "team" matches are simply the aggregate of the individual scores made in individual shoots, while others (the ones that really matter) are shot shoulder-to-shoulder with the team functioning as a cohesive group assisting each other to the best possible performance (or not if they haven't trained and organised to do so, in which case they are likely to lose).

Just to give an example. The GB team to Canada, returned to Bisley this morning, has 20 members. There were about 7 other British shooters at the Championships, plus the UK cadet team, the Athelings. Only the 20 GB team members were eligible to compete in the two big matches - the Canada match and the Commonwealth match. Those 20 were selected over a year ago and have trained and worked together to build a cohesive squad. Teams were announced the evening before each match. For the Canada Match, eight were slected to shoot, with the Captain, 3 coaches, 2 plotters and an Adjutant as the official competing but non-shooting team mebers. The other 5 squad members did register keeping, scoreboards, food & water supplies, watching the opposition and keeping the captain updated with their scores and so on. In the Commonwealth match there were 12 shooters, Captain, 4 coaches and 3 plotters. No-one available to do Adj, so the Captain took a more active role. Henryk Golaszewski shot in both matches, and as a member of two winning GB team can take real pride in a job well done. Winning the Governor-General's prize is a magnificent achievement for Henryk personally. For the team it is the icing on the cake of a great team performance under a highly effective Captain. For me, I was a member of both winning teams (one as Adj, one as a shooter) and to win both matches, in style (400 ex 400 at 600yds in the Canada match, and a really tight high-pressure duel in the Commonwealth match that was either way until the last 4 shooters) is what makes all the effort worthwhile. Both matches were in every sense a team effort, with everyone in the squad giving their best effort to maximise the team performance, as they have done through all the training and preparation before we ever reached the matches in Canada.

Iain

[GazMorris]

...For the team it is ... what makes all the effort worthwhile.

What he said... :goodjob:

Team shooting is so much more than just adding team scores together. For exampe; in difficult conditions, the best shooters don't always get the best scores as they'll be used as guinea pigs to fire pilot shots (often sighters fired out of turn) in order to test what the wind really is, so they often end up losing a point or two so the rest of the team can avoid losing more points to wind.

Gaz