Will Hewland
Well-known member
Right, I have put this down on paper and for those of you who are really bored, here it is. 
Its not a fully comprehensive proposal, but it is long enough to cover the main elements i hope. I conceived it about 7 years ago and have not seen anything to change my mind since. Just my opinion of course!
Background:
The present CPSA system has evolved to cater for the mass market of competition shooters. So, I take it as established that the class system is here to stay and (while you can never please everybody) it works well enough and encourages newcomers and the less intensive shooters to participate meaningfully. The crux of the matter is how best to place shooters in each class ACCURATELY, so that when shooters from all regions meet up for a major event for example, they are correctly classified against true ability. Two main elements need dealing with in my opinion:
Variation in shoot difficulty. By far the biggest issue. This causes little effect for shooters who enter a wide variety of events at different grounds, but for those who do not travel far, or do few events, the average of their scores can be a poor representation of their true ability. It is of course possible to stick to a ground or grounds that tends to produce higher scores (either for most shooters attending, or indeed solely for one shooter who knows the ground well and is comfortable there). The opposite is true, where a shooter may only test themselves on a few tough events. The two examples above can easily place a “morally” A class shooter into either AA or B class respectively.
Knowledge of the grading cut off points. Anybody concerned with their classification grade will know the approximate cut-off points for their class. (They are unknown and vary each period, but only by less than 1 clay usually). This information is displayed on the CPSA website as indeed is a full account of all shooters current and past scores and classifications. A shooter is able to hold back their score, perhaps by just one kill, so as not to cross the grade line, if they are so disposed. This can also be a way of deliberately producing a dropped-score. (More than 10% below average).
Simple solution; stop using score (number of clays hit) as the defining element!
The present system uses the 12 months’ worth of scores at the end of each period. The system then calculates the averages and lists all the shooters in one total list before slicing it up into classes. The Top 5% (AAA), the next 10% (AA), the next 30% (A), the next 30% ( B ) and the lowest 25% ( C ). So, the final classifications are all about finishing order in the countries total results list. And this is fine I feel.
My idea is that each shoot be judged as above, with all emphasis on the finishing order, regardless of number of clays hit. For simplicity, imagine a shoot with 100 total entries. The highest score would be awarded “100%”. The lowest score, last place, would be awarded “0%”. The 50th shooter would be awarded “50%” and every shooter awarded their percentage of how high up the full list they finished. (Its simple maths to convert this to an entry of say 258 entries of course; it’s just percentage.. if you finished 129th, you are awarded 50%). Example: If you enter three shoots, your results may be 72%, 65% and 68%. This averages at 68.3%.
Immediately, the difficulty level of the shoot is irrelevant. A shoot could be won on 99 or 79. It doesn’t matter as the finishing order is everything. In a motor race, they don’t grade a driver by how fast he completed the race, but merely by whether he won, or finished 3rd, or last. They award winners of a running race medals for finishing order, not time taken to complete the event. I propose the same for sporting shooting.
At the period end, the CPSA would barely even have results to process. The AAA shooters would simply have an average of over 85%, while the C class would have one below 25%.
As for manipulation of averages; while shooting, nobody would know what the cut-off point for their class would be that day -in terms of clays hit - because it will move with the shoot difficulty, by as much as 20 clays for the lower classes. Talk of fine sand-bagging is solved.
I would propose that the 10% below your raw average system remain and this is simple to keep. I would also propose that averages would be done every 6 months but not look back 1 year, it is too much, especially with rising stars in lower classes. Remember, under this system it would not matter if a shoot was easy or hard, so there is less concern about a shooters scores being unrepresentative due to selecting just a few preferred events. He or she will still have to beat people, not numbers, to gain a high class.
William Hewland
Its not a fully comprehensive proposal, but it is long enough to cover the main elements i hope. I conceived it about 7 years ago and have not seen anything to change my mind since. Just my opinion of course! Background:
The present CPSA system has evolved to cater for the mass market of competition shooters. So, I take it as established that the class system is here to stay and (while you can never please everybody) it works well enough and encourages newcomers and the less intensive shooters to participate meaningfully. The crux of the matter is how best to place shooters in each class ACCURATELY, so that when shooters from all regions meet up for a major event for example, they are correctly classified against true ability. Two main elements need dealing with in my opinion:
Variation in shoot difficulty. By far the biggest issue. This causes little effect for shooters who enter a wide variety of events at different grounds, but for those who do not travel far, or do few events, the average of their scores can be a poor representation of their true ability. It is of course possible to stick to a ground or grounds that tends to produce higher scores (either for most shooters attending, or indeed solely for one shooter who knows the ground well and is comfortable there). The opposite is true, where a shooter may only test themselves on a few tough events. The two examples above can easily place a “morally” A class shooter into either AA or B class respectively.
Knowledge of the grading cut off points. Anybody concerned with their classification grade will know the approximate cut-off points for their class. (They are unknown and vary each period, but only by less than 1 clay usually). This information is displayed on the CPSA website as indeed is a full account of all shooters current and past scores and classifications. A shooter is able to hold back their score, perhaps by just one kill, so as not to cross the grade line, if they are so disposed. This can also be a way of deliberately producing a dropped-score. (More than 10% below average).
Simple solution; stop using score (number of clays hit) as the defining element!
The present system uses the 12 months’ worth of scores at the end of each period. The system then calculates the averages and lists all the shooters in one total list before slicing it up into classes. The Top 5% (AAA), the next 10% (AA), the next 30% (A), the next 30% ( B ) and the lowest 25% ( C ). So, the final classifications are all about finishing order in the countries total results list. And this is fine I feel.
My idea is that each shoot be judged as above, with all emphasis on the finishing order, regardless of number of clays hit. For simplicity, imagine a shoot with 100 total entries. The highest score would be awarded “100%”. The lowest score, last place, would be awarded “0%”. The 50th shooter would be awarded “50%” and every shooter awarded their percentage of how high up the full list they finished. (Its simple maths to convert this to an entry of say 258 entries of course; it’s just percentage.. if you finished 129th, you are awarded 50%). Example: If you enter three shoots, your results may be 72%, 65% and 68%. This averages at 68.3%.
Immediately, the difficulty level of the shoot is irrelevant. A shoot could be won on 99 or 79. It doesn’t matter as the finishing order is everything. In a motor race, they don’t grade a driver by how fast he completed the race, but merely by whether he won, or finished 3rd, or last. They award winners of a running race medals for finishing order, not time taken to complete the event. I propose the same for sporting shooting.
At the period end, the CPSA would barely even have results to process. The AAA shooters would simply have an average of over 85%, while the C class would have one below 25%.
As for manipulation of averages; while shooting, nobody would know what the cut-off point for their class would be that day -in terms of clays hit - because it will move with the shoot difficulty, by as much as 20 clays for the lower classes. Talk of fine sand-bagging is solved.
I would propose that the 10% below your raw average system remain and this is simple to keep. I would also propose that averages would be done every 6 months but not look back 1 year, it is too much, especially with rising stars in lower classes. Remember, under this system it would not matter if a shoot was easy or hard, so there is less concern about a shooters scores being unrepresentative due to selecting just a few preferred events. He or she will still have to beat people, not numbers, to gain a high class.
William Hewland
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