Paintball Journal

While on a temporary tangent about team philosophy, I’d like to talk about keeping a positive attitude.

In this upcoming tournament that Evan and I will be playing in, there will be better teams than us there. Of that, I have no doubt, I’ve seen some play, I’ve played against some before, and won as well as lost.

But I also don’t doubt that ANY given team can win on ANY given day.

Always think positive. I can’t stress this enough. Oliver Lang, arguably the best paintball player in the world, actually said in an interview with Monthly Paintball Newsletter:

“Play every weekend you can afford, keep a positive attitude, don’t get too cocky, and always look to get better by pushing yourself all the time.”

Keeping a positive outlook and shooting for first are key parts of becoming a winning team. If you don’t expect the absolute best from yourself and your teammates, then you aren’t going to win tourneys, you aren’t gonna get into first place. But if you really give it your all, time and time again, you set yourself and your team up for success.

Well there are a lot of things happening all at once it seems. The drawing I did for school a couple weeks ago is now going to be entered into a high school art show, because my teacher really thinks it has potential or something like that. But to even add more to it she wants me to do a new one, this time with a guy looking the opposite direction, and they’ll be matted and submitted side by side. Great – that’ll be another eight to ten hours of work to do by mid February.

Also, we’re still not sure that we’re going to have third man for the tourney this coming Sunday. One of our friends deflated a lung two weeks ago, and then it happened again just last week. So he’s been in the hospital under surgery for the past few days, so he’s out. Our other friend wasn’t sure whether he wanted to use up the rest of his money or not, but we made a deal that if he fixed my busted Bushmaster 2k4 then I’d paid his entry fee.

And that brings up a whole new story. So just when you think you have a gun in working condition, you take it out for a day and blow two regs, a gauge, detents fall out, and much of the wiring gets disconnected. So the B2k4 I bought died on a hot summer day of last year, and I’ve been meaning to get it fixed ever since so I can resell it. Now it’s like killing two birds with one stone. Get my gun fixed for cheap, and get the third man were looking for.

Team Ultimate has one of the greatest philosophies that I’ve seen for a pro team. It’s available in it’s original form @ Team Ultimate’s Site.

Ultimate Philosophy

Ted Wolfson opened both a Paintball field and a store to subsidize team expenses on the tournament circuit. A few years ago, Ted and a bunch of kids fell in love with the sport of Paintball after playing in the 5-man rookie division at World Cup. Even though Ultimate is now a national competition team in the Open class XBall division, they are fundamentally a youth group, which is an extension of Ted’s life long duty as a Christian. “I came from a deeply religious background and I was a youth group instructor, so I wanted to do it for the kids as part of our ministry. The kids are not all religious but I at least try to have a positive influence on them,” he explains, “Our goal is to help the kids grow into young adults so that they can become positive examples within society.” Personality and character are very important to Ted. There is no time to worry about kids getting into drugs or trouble. At the Chicago PSP this season, he was forced to make a decision regarding on half of the team. “I had to let a few people go. The were good players but they didn’t mesh well. I don’t want any superstars. I just want to go and win and do it right.”

The changes within the roster started to show last winter. “They were followers rather than leaders. They are still good boys and I worry about what they are doing with Miami Effect and Infamous, but I will not tolerate a lack of respect towards the team or myself. My partner and I give everything we earn from the field store to the team; the kids never pay for paint or other expenses. To see the disrespect is hurtful and I fell that letting them go was the right thing to do because I don’t think that we would have progressed in the sport with them. The team chemistry was not there. Each player must be dependent upon the others because it’s not just about individual skill, but rather a team effort.”

To fill the void that the players left, Ted pulled up younger talent from Ultimate Kids, their farm team. After skipping the North East Open, Ted brought in seven young guns to compete at Cup. Although none of the players had ever played a game of Open Class Paintball, Ultimate still performed at the same level of intensity, taking the Naughty Dogs into overtime. “I played everyone and they gave it everything they had. I can’t wait till next year”.

Show some respect
One rule that the Ultimate roster must adhere to is respecting everyone. “I demand respect,” asserts Ted. “The drugs and alcohol aren’t even a thought to my kids, but the respect issue is very important. It not only emphasizes our professional status but it’s a good value that the kids will carry with them for the rest of their lives.”

Cussing, cheating and bad grades are also strict rules, but the majority of the kids are in accelerated programs at school or even in college so Ted does not fret over their grades, which also makes the parents very happy.

Ultimate has two girls rostered; one is a sister to two of the boys on the team and the other came from Femme Fatales. There is no special treatment for the girls nor is there any disrespect. Both have been playing a while and know how to handle male aggression.

Life lessons are a big teaching from Ted. Being a Christian, he passes along his knowledge on how to deal with life’s little hurdles in the way that a Christian should. Parents are made aware ahead of time that while playing with Ultimate, Ted will attempt to instill positive morals into the kids via his religious teachings. “The religious part is played up a lot because it is everything to me. I’m not telling the players that they need to attend church, but I am using my religious background as a way to teach them life lessons. I do not alienate people if they are not Christians, but I do try to teach them how to have better morals and deal with difficult situations involving stress and anger.”

Straight talk
Many of Ted’s teachings transcend Paintball. The kids on Ultimate learn how to be assertive and work hard to succeed in not only Paintball but also everyday life.

“Getting cheated on the field is the same as having someone lie to you in the workplace or trying to get ahead by doing the wrong thing. It doesn’t make it right for my guys to wipe a hit of to win a game. When you get mad in Paintball, are you going to yell at someone? Are you going to do that in the work place or with your wife? It’s just a game and they need to work things out and suck it up and play the game.”

Parents do not have a problem with Ted’s teachings; they have developed a high level of trust in him because he has helped to shape their children in a positive way. When the kids are at a tournament, parents know and trust that Ted is always with them and overseeing their every move. “The parents really like the level of trust and in turn makes them want to be more involved with the team. I see a lot of kids whose parents are not involved with their lives and their relationship suffers because of it.”

Like Doc, there is no monetary return for Ted. “Everything we make is put right back into the team. There are no financial gains. Emotionally there is a gain, but it might not be shown for a while. My reward would be for them to think back 20 years later and say, ‘I learned how to be a good man or woman because of the values that I learned from being on Team Ultimate.’ It’s just a game, it’s just Paintball, but life and working are for long time. The kids need to have enough self-esteem to do the right thing in everyday life.”

Sometimes, the Paintball lifestyle can take hold and never let go. The romance of being on the road and playing at the top of the sport can create an ego so big that it can consume a person’s humanity. A player can get wrapped up in the excitement and fail to see the negative effects until they make so many mistakes that they hit rock bottom. It may take more than a coach or other players to lift the person back up – sometimes it may actually take a little divine intervention…

Well I received Greg Hasting’s Tournament Paintball Max’d as a gift for Christmas, and I’ve been slowly working my way through it a little at a time. This is for PS2, and I’ve hardly played the others so I can’t really compare them except that I do know that the graphics for Xbox kill the PS2 version. No surprise there, right?

It’s actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I’ve been playing all the way through on normal and the competition is tough in some areas. The first match I may totally slaughter the opposing team with something like six survivors, and then the very next round I get slaughtered and might not even get an elimination. It’s very unpredictable to say the least, which makes it a great challenge.

But there a few things that just down right annoy me. Firstly, what is my team thinking when they walk through the open when the other team still has five guys in? That part is where it just gets unrealistic; you won’t even see a newbie make that mistake, sheesh! So after they all die and leave you to face off several opponents, you wait behind your back bunker for somebody to come running down to get you. But nobody comes. They might have three or four people, and yet they just sit down on their side and continue to shoot, and wait for you to come to them.

Secondly, and these are mostly minor things, but what’s up with the music? I can tolerate some of it, but come on. It’s the same songs playing over and over, and most games don’t use rock songs with actual words. They usually just have something upbeat or whatever, but this just gets old, and fast. And then how about the celebration? Your team rushes downfield with you and starts doing these gay little jumps in the air.

But ah well, I can’t put it down it seems. It takes awhile to get set up with decent gear, but once you get that Shocker or Timmy man it’s total devastation. Well I’m off to play more I think.

K3 Productions makes paintball movies.

Free movies, that is, available for download at their site, making them one of several production teams that does high quality video editing for some sweet downloads. While perhaps not quite up to par with DerDer, the movies still elicit quite a response by many paintballers. Because the movies are available for free at K3’s site, and on hosted sites like YouTube, the videos reach a larger audience than DerDer and companies that don’t release full length movies online.

Recently, K3 has actually put something up for purchase, but for a greater cause. Coverage of the 3rd Annual Lauren’s Hope Foundation Charity Paintball Tournament is on sale through the site. When a production venue like K3 uses its influence for a good cause, it just gets me feeling all warm and fuzzy. And kinda wanting to mow faces. But I think that’s fairly constant, so…

Learning to walk comes in all different ways for people. Some people are simply naturals. Others, like me, might not be able to walk a trigger to save their life. I’ve seen girls at school show me up! I have improved over the last few months, don’t get me wrong, but I can still get a lot faster.

My stock Ion trigger isn’t exactly the easiest thing to walk, and I think most will agree with me there. I tend to walk it with the very tips of my fingers. I’ve tried further down towards the joint, but I just can’t get the strength to keep it going. I can’t wait till I get a better gun someday, because I know I can walk the regular triggers like the one on my busted B2K4. Now that’s a sweet trigger.

The only way you’re going to get better at it is to practice practice practice! Watch TV with it in your lap, carry it around the house, and take the time to find what part of the finger works best for you. But be warned, parents and siblings can get really annoyed by that “damn clicking”. I don’t know about you all, but that’s like music to my ears when I get it going.

Here’s a fun little thing to try out. I have a fairly light mouse button, so it works pretty decent for me. I’ve been able to walk it up to 18 BPS, but I think only once. I’m not even sure that it’s accurate. And for ramp, walk it while holding down the space bar.

This is a fairly amusing reloading drill. If you find that your reload times aren’t what they ought to be, this drill just might help.

Firstly, this is pretty much in the style of an old Western draw. Stand the two players back to back, and then step away because things are about to get hostile. Make sure both players have completely empty hoppers.

You, as the official adjudicator, will count off paces, something like fifteen or so, depending on how panicked you want your guys to be when reloading. The fewer paces, the more stress they’re put under, and the faster their reload times will get.

After the end step, the players turn, and reload, and shoot as fast as possible. First one to get hit loses. Oh, and no ramping, because that could get ugly at five paces.

You practice for a reason. You practice to get better. You practice so you don’t make noob mistakes in the middle of your first tournament. I believed we learned an invaluable lesson, the hard way mind you, last Sunday. As the title suggests – cross it up and lock it down.

Too make this simple, I broke to back right. The rest of my three teammates broke to the left, one stayed home. I get up from my slide and just as I look to my left I take one to the face from two guys gunning their way up the opposite tape. That leaves the rest of my team looking inside (by coincidence), and the two guys slip right in behind them – over in fifteen seconds.
It was a serious lack of communication. All three of them assumed that somebody was watching the left tape, which I was for about a half second. Besides that though, they assumed that one of them was watching that left side.

Lesson one: never assume anything in paintball.

(more…)

In 1986 the first paintball club was formed, unsurprisingly at the United States Military Academy. In 1994 the first Intercollegiate Tournament was held.

However, it wasn’t until 2000 that the National Collegiate Paintball Association was formed.

The NCPA is now one of the most under-rated paintball affiliated associations in the nation. Many schools that have funded paintball teams are putting anywhere from $5,000-$15,000 a season for their team to compete in everything from regularly scheduled NCPA events to NPPL and PSP events.

This is money, coming not from players, not from industry sponsors, but from the colleges. This is great, because it is only an infusion, no company is losing money to sponsor a team that is fully funded by their school. That said, many teams also have small sponsorships with companies, especially the schools that consistently compete with the top teams.

Looking through the list of colleges with paintball clubs on the NCPA Site, I’m impressed that several colleges that I will be applying to have partially sponsored teams! Now I’m pretty excited about applying to these schools, because I know that my paintballing can continue into my college years without too much trouble.

Finally got around to sketching this up from our practice at Friendly Fire. First off, sorry for the pic for being tilted sideways. I don’t have a scanner so I had to resort to my digital camera. Secondly, the big thing in the center is a medium X, it has a closed triangular base, but the rest is just like any other X bunker. And finally, the drawing actually needs to be a bit elongated, but it’s close enough I’d say. For a larger image, click here.

Now, some of you are probably saying, Dana, why the hell did you just post a video with little or no affiliation with paintball?

I’ll tell you why. That line “I’m gonna come at you like a spider monkey!” is exactly what you should be saying for paintball.

Oddly enough, bouncing around in a squatting position is one of the most agile, flexible, and mobile positions that you can assume when playing pretty much any bunker. It makes you look like a crazed spider monkey, but that’s okay. My friend Sam was playing all day in that position, and did pretty damn well. Of course, he’s also a lot better than me anyway, but that spider monkey position is pretty incredible.

As soon as I have video, I’ll put it up.

Well it’s nearly 10:00 p.m. here Sunday night (I’m posting this to the morning – if you notice things out of time context it’s because we have to make atleast one post every weekday morning, so I’m generally writing stuff early), and I think I could just crash right now and sleep forever. Played a good six hours at Friendly Fire again today - our second weekend in a row. The three man young guns is in two weeks, and I’m glad we’ve been fortunate enough to practice as much as we have lately. It’ll be my first tourney, Dana’s second so we’re taking in all the help we can get.

There were some great people there, older guys mainly that were real helpful. “Doc” was probably the coolest. If I’m still able to play paintball at his age, well that’d just be fine. He sort of coached us through a couple games, and really pointed out a lot of things we should be doing (or not doing).

I still remember our worst blunder yet, quite clearly actually. I broke to the back right standup, Dana stayed home and was shooting right, Ben broke to back left and looked right, and JP had taken the left 30, and was also looking right. By the time I stood up my bunker was being torn to shreds, and I look out to the left side to see Doc and Josh gunning their way up the left tape. I took one to the mask, and amazingly it bounced but I had called myself anyways figuring there’s no way that it couldn’t have busted. Well, that leaves the rest of my team looking right, all three of them, and Doc and Josh slip right along the side and take them out. It wasn’t one of our better games.

We took a ton of video again, and all I need now is a special firewire so I can get this in the computer. Real cool footage though. I think I’ll draw up the field layout sometime tomorrow, and post it up. I love to analyze fields, so I figure it’ll make an interesting topic.

From The PSP Website:

Paintball Sports Promotions is proud to announce the introduction of
turf to the most prominent paintball series in the world. The turf will debut on all six fields at the LA Open to be held at the Home Depot Center in Carson, CA March 1st-4th.

While the PSP has secured the use of the turf at events during the 2007 season, the Mid-Atlantic Open, the Chicago Open, and the World Cup will continue to be played on grass. Our fourth event of the season to take place August 2nd-5th may use the turf depending on location. We are excited about this great new product and the options that it will open up to the league in terms of venue selection.

Over the past season, we have recognized the opportunities turf creates for selecting venues and at times had venues slip by due to a lack of turf. We chose to continue hosting events on grass through 2006 instead of purchasing the lesser grade turf which we could have afforded at the time. We appreciate the strain of the sport on our athletes. We understand the arduous physical requirements of truly intense competition. We wanted to provide a quality turf that would meet the rigorous demands of the Xball format; a turf that is truly worthy of the sport.

The new bladed turf has been designed specifically to meet those needs. It has been tried and tested numerous times over by experienced paintball players that understand the importance of a field’s playing surface. It has been designed specifically for the athlete, for the sport, for you.

Stay tuned to www.pspevents.com for more information about the 2007 season including information on events, registration, and much much more!

Updated Jan 11, 2007 Written by Keely Watson

It’s about time. The future of paintball is in turf, you can already see it in the NPPL, and though it can be slippery, as long as it’s properly formulated and maintained, it is the ideal surface for paintball.

Ten things not to say to a woman at the paintball field, or if you’re feeling particularly ballsy, go for it! Just remember to take pictures or video of how she responds and send it to us! We’d very much like to see how hard you get owned.

1. Will you help me screw this in?
2. I seem to have lost my condom, may I borrow yours?
3. You’ve got a serious problem when your pods are bigger than your hopper.
4. Are those my balls on your face?
5. See, like this. All you do is aim and shoot.
6. Will you hold my balls?
7. I didn’t know girls played paintball!
8. I never thought I’d see the day when a girl could handle her balls better than I can handle my own.
9. Stand back babe, I’ll show you how a real pro does it.
10. Whenever is comes down to playing dirty, you always want a wide spread on the field.

Okay, okay. To be fair I guess we need a few lines that the ladies can say.

1. Wow, your balls are dimply!
2. Are all of them Stubbies? Your tank that is.
3. Yeah, I have a 16”. What about it?

Well I tried anyways, haha.

I recently added my first upgrade to my Ion. A blue CP Sling Trigger.

The Ion stock trigger is bad, I was able to move it pretty fast, but there is just no comparison when you get a good aftermarket trigger. I knew the shape I was looking for in a trigger, and the Sling is perfect. I had a few difficulties with the installation, but that’s mostly from inexperience with how an Ion trigger is set up.

The shape is exactly like this, except it is blue, and sexier.

What a trigger can do for you:

Most tourneys that you’ll enter with an Ion, I’ll assume will be set to 15 BPS Semi. Now, 15 BPS is a lot easier to hit with a new trigger, trust me. The only problem is running out of paint…