The pressure started before the shot.
In the Saratoga gym in 2016, competitors watched one another while they waited for their turns. Across the shooting stations, basketballs struck the floor and the rim. Scores were counted in view of the people who would have to compete against them. Prize money was at stake. Elimination meant that an ordinary shooting attempt could help decide who stayed in the contest.
The shooters brought an intensity that no event schedule could supply. They studied the competition, cared about the outcome, and understood that their own performance would be watched just as closely.
For us, that was the most encouraging part of Saratoga. The hardest part was reconciling what we felt inside the gym with what it took to put people there. The competition worked. The economics of producing it did not.
Both lessons remain central to what International Shooter Federation is building today.
Could shooting carry the competition?
We produced the Saratoga Frees and Threes Contest in 2016 and Saratoga Frees and Threes II in 2017 to explore a larger idea: basketball shooting could support a competitive structure of its own.
A traditional game gives a shot its context through the score, the clock, teammates, and defenders. We wanted to see whether a basketball shooting competition could create enough pressure and meaning with the shooter at its center. Would people prepare for it? Would advancement matter? Would they care enough to bring their best?
These were manually operated events. People organized the stations, counted attempts, handled the rounds, and kept the competition moving. The lessons came from producing real contests, with all the demands that put on an organizer. They were not technology pilots.
The competitors gave us an answer
The shooters trained for the contests and cared about how they performed. Elimination gave the results consequences. Watching other competitors added something that a private workout could not: a visible standard to meet, under the same public scrutiny.
A shooter could be waiting for a turn and still be part of the contest, following someone else’s score and thinking about the performance ahead. Once shots affected advancement and prize outcomes, the gym became a different competitive environment.
We did not have to manufacture the desire to compete. The participants brought it with them.
That experience strengthened our conviction that basketball shooting could function as a sport without requiring teams, contact, coaches, or a full game. A clear test and meaningful stakes gave the skill enough weight to hold a competition together.
The limits of that conclusion matter. Two local contests did not establish national demand, product-market fit, or a profitable business. They showed us that the competitive experience had substance for the people who took part.
Better execution in 2017
The second event ran with greater clarity and control. We had dialed in the timing. Volunteers understood their assignments. Responsibilities were clearer, and the work of running the competition was better coordinated.
That progress gave us a useful distinction. We could learn to operate the event better. Lessons from the first year could become a more controlled experience in the second. But better execution inside the gym could not solve the challenge of reaching enough shooters outside it.
The improvement was real. So was the constraint it left in place.
A strong competition, an unsustainable event model
Approximately 65 competitors participated each year. That was a meaningful field and a valuable source of operating experience. It was not enough to sustain the events economically.
Our largest weakness was marketing reach. We could give the people who arrived a compelling reason to compete, but we could not efficiently reach enough of them. Each entrant had to learn about the contest, be available on the scheduled date, and travel to the same gym.
Meanwhile, the event carried venue, staffing, administration, promotion, and prize obligations. Those costs had to be supported by the field we could actually assemble. The intensity of the competition did not change that arithmetic.
We had to separate two things that are easy to confuse: a participant experience worth delivering and an economically sustainable way to deliver it.
This was our operating problem to solve. It was not a criticism of the shooters, the volunteers, Saratoga, or the venue. Their contribution made the experience possible. The model still depended on concentrating enough demand in one place at one time.
Simply scheduling more centralized events would not remove that dependence. We would face the same work of reaching a field, bringing it together, and administering the contest again. Before expanding, we needed to rethink how the competition could reach people.
Why we kept 20 shots around the arc
The Saratoga contests evolved. Looking back across that experience, one format emerged as our clearest foundation: 20 shots, on the move, around the arc.
Movement asks more of a shooter than repeating an attempt from one settled position. It creates rhythm, introduces fatigue, and requires recovery between shots. The competitor has decisions to make while moving through the performance. Multiple locations test a broader shooting skill and give observers more to follow.
Twenty attempts also give a round useful substance without making it excessively long. The challenge is easy to explain and the performance is easy to follow. We do not need a collection of unrelated drills to show what is being tested.
That is why the 20-shot OTM Around-The-Arc format remains our planned launch foundation. It preserves individual competition, measurable performance, advancement, and the pressure of being watched and compared. A defined round also lends itself to recording and review, with the potential to contribute to ratings, rankings, and advancement under consistent standards.
We have not found a stronger foundational format for launch. We should still be willing to refine it as testing reveals more. Saratoga informed the choice; it did not settle every rule for every future competition.
Why free throws did not remain at the center
Free throws were an important part of the original contests and a legitimate competitive test. The decision to move beyond the combined “Frees and Threes” concept came from asking which discipline best expressed the sport we wanted to build.
For that purpose, free throws offered less movement, visual variety, and competitive differentiation. We found the stronger combination of skill, pressure, pacing, and spectacle in around-the-arc shooting. Three-point shooting also felt more closely connected to the direction and culture of modern basketball.
That is a choice about ISF’s foundation, not the worth or difficulty of free-throw shooting. We retained the individual contest and the stakes surrounding it while narrowing the launch format around the test we believed could carry the sport furthest.
In this original event footage, Bromirski moves between shooting positions around the three-point arc while a passer supplies the ball and people watch from the sideline. This is a manually administered 2016 competition.
Reaching shooters beyond one gym
Saratoga left us with a different organizing question. Instead of asking how many shooters we could bring to our gym, we began asking how a credible competition could reach them where they already trained.
That question shapes the planned ISF App. We are working toward recorded competitive attempts within defined Official Opportunities, supported by repeatable standards, verification, and human review where required. Verified performances would provide the basis for ratings, rankings, and a record competitors could build over time.
The aim is a pathway from local participation to larger competition, reaching beyond any one organizer’s immediate market. It also means reducing dependence on travel to a centralized event and the manual administration required to run every round there.
Moving beyond one gym does not make the business problem disappear. We still have to reach shooters, earn their trust, and establish whether we can deliver credible competition sustainably. Technology has to prove its usefulness in that work.
ISF remains pre-launch, built first for adults 18+, and targeting 2027. Features, verification methods, and competition rules are still under development, as the ISF FAQ explains. The historical contests do not establish the accuracy or readiness of today’s planned technology, future eligibility, or the economics of the new model.
What we took forward
Saratoga gave us something more useful than an uncomplicated success story: a reason to keep building and evidence of what had to change.
We saw that shooters would bring real competitive intensity to a contest built around their skill. We also learned that a compelling event could remain economically unsustainable. The experience changed our format and operating direction without changing the conviction underneath them. Basketball shooting deserves a competitive structure of its own. Our work now is to build the infrastructure that can take it beyond one gym.