Categories

For my regular readers, this is an idea that is strictly CFDA related.  My apologies in advance if this post is technical and strictly CFDA related.

Those of us who have shot CFDA matches have probably shot a category match.  Category matches are age-related matches, and they're a lot of fun.  But, we've got a lot of categories, and as you get older, the categories get shorter.  Look at this copy from the Gunslinger's Guidelines.

Recognized Age-Based Categories are:
Billy the Kid, Annie Oakley ages 8 through 15;
Boy’s & Girl’s Junior ages 16 & 17 (and Level 4 Youth)
Men’s & Ladies Traditional age 18+;
Men’s & Ladies 49’r age 49+;
Men’s & Ladies Senior age 60+;
Men’s & Ladies Super Senior age 65+;
Old Timers & Grand Dame age 70+;
Golden Guns & Golden Girls age 75+, and
Elder Statesmen & Stateswoman age 80+.

By my count, that's nine categories.  That's a lot of individual categories to keep straight.  One problem I've seen with these standard categories is that occasionally, there won't be enough shooters in a particular category to make a valid match, and those folks are re-assigned to another category.    Everybody is good-natured about it.   But.one of the problems with the Traditional category is that it get really big.  We've got a lot of shooters from age 18-49, so we might want to split that category, and consolidate some of the others.

I've been to some shoots where the Traditional Category is huge, and the more senior categories are tiny.  That's not to say that the level of competition is less, no, our senior shooters have the twin attributes of experience and cool-headedness.  They're seasoned competitors.  But, we might want to spread out the larger categories and consolidate the smaller ones.

Here's my idea:

Youth (youngsters to include Category 3 youth).
Traditional (Category 4 youth and adults up to age 37)
Seasoned Hands (age38-48)
Forty-Niners (Age 49-59)
Senior (Age 60-69)
Golden Guns (Age 70+)

We'd split every category into Mens and Ladies, and we could change the names of the categories if we wanted to, and I'm just throwing this out for consideration.