Thank you to Catch 10-22 for his working the number and providing the summary below.. Not a barn burner of year for growth, but lots of victories nonetheless, with many more Rifleman and Pistoleer™s being forged to help Save our Nation!
The Maryland program made some adjustments in 2023 to scale our number of shoots to demand and increase our concentration of ranges.
We had 24 total clinics in 2023, not including 2 IBCs (one Rifle, one Pistol) vs. 31 in 2022. While the number was lower, we only had 3 cancelled shoots this year due to range scheduling conflicts and no sign-ups versus 10 last year (which was our most except for the COVID year...and that was 11). The number this year also reflects the Maryland Cadre not supporting/leading multiple shoots in West Virginia and Southern Pennsylvania that we have in prior years.
Of these clinics, we held 6 pistol clinics (vs 8 in 2022) and 1 RKD (vs 2 in 2022). Part of the decrease in those two events was losing some of our primary ranges for them - Annapolis for pistol and Delmarva for RKD - due to the retirement of one of our sponsoring instructors. Overall, we only had events at 4 MD ranges (down from 7). But we significantly increased the number of shoots at Thurmont and Marriottsville to pick up most of the gap.
46% of our shoots were sold out or nearly so and overall utilization was at 65% of total capacity. Both of those numbers are slightly down from where we have been from 2020-22 (average of 64% sold out or nearly so, and 76% utilization). With only 189 shooters on the line, we were over 100 down from the prior two years which were over 300. While it would not have been possible to hit 300 this year in any event due to paring down events (we had a total capacity of 289), we had hoped that concentrating events would yield higher utilization and that did not happen.
Things were much brighter on the instructor front, with our lowest instructor-to-student ratio since 2016 (2 students per instructor average over the whole year)! That is a real testament to our 12 highly engaged volunteers that worked tirelessly this year to come out and support the program. We couldn't do it without you. We do think reducing the number of shoots and ranges (driving time) will help reduce burnout.
We also had a lot of instructor promotions this year - I guess you could call it The Year of the Red Hat with ProgressNotPerfection, Phoebe, Liberty Boy, and k3 all stepping up and completing their PCs. Our Rifle IBC headed my Maximum Ordinate and Monkey surely played a role in inspiring them to earn those hats. We're also happy to welcome a new Shoot Boss, Lycos, who has been instrumental in expanding the Pistol and RKD program at AGC - Huzzah!
Our cadre also supported two LibertySeeds this year - one for SAR in Martinsburg, WV and Defenders Day at Fort Howard, MD.
We were also able to, thanks to our Pistol IBC, promote no less than SEVEN pistol instructors this year, which has really enhanced the quality of instruction and reduced burn-out risk for our Charter pistol shoot bosses. The pistol program continues to attract new students. In fact, we tried for two weekends at Thurmont to do back-to-back one-day pistol and rifle events...and had zero cross over between participants in the classes. That is probably an anomaly (we have had cross-over at most events) but it also illustrates that we are getting new shooters to hear our message of liberty.
Thanks for this, looking forward spending 2024 with y'all!
Great review for a new instructor like me - thanks for all the great data and help along the journey so far!
ryan/k3