The 2023 USPSA Area 5 Championship was held at the Brooklyn Sportsman’s Club between May 31st and June 4th, 2023. The shooting schedule had me competing half days on Saturday and Sunday. My main competition at the match included Jacob Hetherington from the AMU, Army Marksmanship Unit, John Vlieger from team Mark7 Reloading and Tom Castro from the Tom Castro Shooting Academy.
Everyone with the exception of Jacob shot together on our little Carry Optics Super Squad. Results are on PractiScore and can be found HERE.
Squad #201
Area 5 is what I would consider a more traditional style USPSA match. It’s not a hose fest with targets 5 feet from your face, and you generally won’t see crazy activators or gimmicky stages that are inconsistent from shooter to shooter. You can however expect to see some very challenging stages that mix some element you probably haven’t practiced much with others you have
Take stage #13 “The Train Station” Time code 5:50 on the attached YouTube video. It was a 2 string stage requiring some accurate distance shooting using only your primary hand after the reload on the first string, then more stand and deliver shooting with another mandatory reload between positions ending with 3 targets draped with penalty targets to be engaged with only your non-dominant hand. This year they were gentle and gave us a time limited of 12 seconds, which sounds bad but actually make the stage easier. Last years Area 5 had an identically looking stage without a par time, which meant every miss you had not only counted against your point total but gave you an additional penalty for each missed shot. This left a large percentage of the match effectively zeroing this 120 point stage due to missed shots. For 2023 the addition of the 12 second par time meant that it was treated like the now fixed time stage it was, meaning the points you score is your hit factor, assuming you didn’t hit a noshoot or fire an overtime shot.
Fun fact – Only 4 people zeroed the stage in 2023 whereas nearly 40 people zeroed the stage in 2022. In Carry Optics Tom Castro won this stage with a 112 point score while I finished 2nd Carry Optics with a 110 point score.
Should YOU spend your money shooting Area 5?
This is one of the best area matches in USPSA and I absolutely recommend attending Area 5. I believe this is my 3rd year shooting the Area 5 at the Brooklyn Sportsman’s Club and I every year they continue to make it better.
Huge thank you to the staff and everyone that makes these matches possible by volunteering your time and energy designing, building, staffing and administering events such as these.
THANK YOU.
Results & Equipment
I’m happy to say Canik pulled out another win at Area 5 Championship this year. Final Carry Optics standing were
Nils Jonasson 1st place
John Vlieger 2nd place
Tom Castro 3rd place
My pistol was the Canik SFX Rival-S which is Canik’s new steel frame 9mm pistol designed specifically for USPSA, IDPA and IPSC competition.
The Basepads I use are a combination TaylorFreelance and Taran Tactical extensions with Grams springs and followers.
Nils Jonasson 