The new CMA Safety Officer Course is ready! It's a one-day course for experienced competitors that would like to become more involved and take over more responsibility in the sport.
Being a safety officer, or SO, is primarily hard work. You need to spend all day on the range, help design and build the stages, review and correct the setup and then run and score all the shooters. Large matches will have separate build, staff shooting and match shooting days, making for a long weekend for the staff.
However, being a safety officer can also be very rewarding. You are part of the staff team and are involved in preparing and running the competition. You ensure that the shooters can enjoy a safe and fun match as you would expect when joining another match as a shooter yourself. The shooters will respect you and be grateful for your dedication and hard work. Without safety officers, no sport shooting events are possible. Safety officers are the backbone of the sport.

SO Profile
Apart from being a shooter him- or herself, the SO needs to have some additional skills that make him or her suitable for the task. A good SO is:
competent and prepared
fair & firm
talking straight and speaking the truth
consistent & integer
friendly & funny
a role model for safety and sportsmanship
capable but humble
Certification course
The SO course is a standardized one-day class with the goal to prepare the participants to be able to
Manage the safety on a CMA stage
Run & score CMA handgun and 2-gun stages
The safety officers usually work in a team of two on one stage. Newly certified SOs should pair up with an experienced SO so that they can learn and copy best practices.

The course consists of a classroom presentation about firearms and range safety, typical hazards to avoid, teamwork, command technique, scoring, SO tools and a a couple of other topics. After the theoretical part, the candidates will apply the learning points in practice. They will do several iterations of setting up, running and scoring stages. After each run they will receive well founded feedback about what they did well and how to improve in the next iteration.
In the evening, the days work will be analyzed and discussed and the instructor will decide on the certification of the candidates. The new SOs will be encouraged to sign up for the staff team in the next matches and to help with running skills tests for competitors.
The SO course is the first step, but being a good SO takes a lot of experience!
Certification renewal
We want our SOs to stay current and maintain their skills at a practical level. The idea is to require an SO to be on the staff team for a minimum number of matches in a given period of time. For example, say, a minimum of 4 matches in 2 years.
The match directors will have to upload their staff to the the database after a match so that the process can be automated. The current certification status and the number of match credits will be visible on the personal dashboard. The exact renewal criteria will be worked out and implemented on the website in the near future.

Course standards
In the countries where there already are instructors that can give the SO classes, all new SOs will have to pass the standard course. The instructors have access to the course material including lesson plan, presentation, stages, stage checklist, feedback forms and so on and they can upload the certification to the database. In this way, the course is standardized globally and we get a uniform level of skills and knowledge for our new safety officers.
From July 1, 2024, all new safety officers will have to pass the certification course.

New countries and clubs
In new countries or for new clubs without access to a local instructor, we will work out a solution, so that shooters can start to enjoy the sport. Just take contact to get going.
Additional courses
Additional courses for trainers and match directors are planned for the future. Stay tuned for more news!
Thanks for reading and I hope to see you soon on the range!
Sincerely
Andy