Paintball Journal

This year, especially, Team Ironmen has risen once more into the spotlight, vindicating the hundreds of fans who have supported them over the years.

This is largely due to two players: Nicky Cuba and Oliver Lang. I’m not talking about their outstanding playing abilities, though that certainly is a factor. I’m talking about the intensity that they brought to the team. They gave the team a little hype to live up to and the LA Ironmen are living it up!

Try: 1st Place at PSP LAO.

The extremely strong roster is looking for more finishes like this, but didn’t perform quite up to par, finishing just under Joy at Huntington Beach in late March. A 5th, while not terrible, isn’t where Team Ironmen expects to be.

I’m rooting for the Ironmen this season. I’d enjoy seeing some big things out of them. A strong roster with a strong coaching staff, the Ironmen look ready to take the podium for the rest of the 07 Tourney Season.

Woodsball is the huge majority of played paintball today. This comes with the “rifle-esque” markers, the camouflaged players, the military feel of the sport that we have to distance ourselves from.

As Evan’s post makes evident, as long as we continue to propagate our sport as something like this, it will continue to receive bad publicity like the show he mentioned on CNN. Violence and militarism characterize the public view of paintball. The only way to change this is by shifting the focus to the speedball venue, in events like those put on by PSP, NPPL, CFOA etc. etc.

I’m not saying eliminate woodsball or mil-sim. I enjoy playing this format of paintball immensely and anything to hinder or alter it would greatly sadden me. However, the general public can no longer go on in ignorance of our sport! Paintball is not a sport of inherent violence! And while people might have trouble seeing that aspect in paintball played in the woods by a bunch of kids wearing camo and waving guns around, I think they’d have a lot easier time of it watching paintball played in a large venue format.

You’d be surprised at how much difference flashy bunkers, teams, and guns can make to an inexperienced person.

Obviously this V-Tech shooting is a horrible tragedy, and it never should have happened – nothing like that should ever happen. But yet it does, and as I watched the news report the topic of violence in teenage lives inevitably came up. I just rolled my eyes at the discussion unfolding with the host subbing in for Glenn Beck on his show on CNN and the guest speaker.
Right away it jumped straight to violence in video games, TV, movies, media…and yes, they mentioned paintball. Right there on public television broadcasting to millions and millions of viewers tuning in to get the latest report on the incident, and the host says “I just took my son out paintballing for his 12th birthday, and I have to think…how is this contributing to the violence he is exposed to?�

It may as well been a slug to the face, because here we are – responsible paintballers -trying our best to make this sport a reality; one that millions can enjoy. I can somewhat tolerate the dumb people who just use it for minor offenses like paintballing school windows or what have you, been when you deliberately categorize paintball as a violence-promoting sport – well that just PISSES ME OFF. Millions of viewers saw that, and I know how the media holds sway over what the people think.

And naturally the argument on firearm bans followed shortly after. Seriously, what good is that going to do? Do you honestly think that a person will forfeit the guns they own to the government? I think not. So what if theoretically it was passed and guns are banned in the United States? That isn’t going to stop the violence and will only make it just somewhat harder for criminals to get their hands on them, but money talks, and for the right price, anything can be bought.

If this trend towards violence is going to change it will have to come straight form the parents. Who else puts more influence on the person that a child will become? I see it all the time at school. The druggies and heavy drinkers all come from a poor family life, most coming form the poorer parts of our city. Perhaps the parents are always out working to support them, or just so tired they can’t constantly keep their eyes on them, but either way something isn’t connecting. I honestly believe that’s where 90% of the problems arise.

Sorry, this was just a rant that built up as I watched the media after this shooting. I’ve had these feelings for awhile, and it feels good to get the word out, and it also feels good to take a stand for violent video games and paintball! I’m an avid fan of both. I play MoHAA, CoD2, BF1942, Greg Hastings Tournament Paintball and dozens of others. I listen to loud, angry music. I watch violent war movies. I’m guilty of every accusation toward violence in a teen’s life…but never will I harm innocent people, never.

Bad parents – I blame you!

Alrite, let’s start off with a quick roster:

Rocky Knuth: Team Captain
Raymond Knuth
Trevor Hocking
Tyler McCluskey “TMAC�
Mike Lew
Hector “The One” Cardona
Kasey Field
Adam Smith
Colt Roberts
Chris Dazzi
Mark Nelson
Zach Wake
Kevin Fillers
Drew Robertson

Rocky is a straight up killer, and the ‘Dogs are looking good in the ‘07 season, even with several new players from Legacy and Ultimate. Though they performed poorly at HB, coming in 8th in the Pro Division, the ND Team is gearing up for a much stronger showing at the Tampa NPPL Event in May. (And I won’t even mention their LAO ranking…)

Rocky Knuth has written several articles available on the ND Website. They are very well written and extremely helpful, so definitely check ‘em out!

The Naughty Dogs are shooting PL Shockers this season, a big change from their main ICD Sponsorship last year. Though, these new Shockers look tight…

I’m not at all crazy about Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story. The plot seems fine, kind of like the Dodgeball of paintball, but it’s really not representing professional level paintball at all. One, it just looks downright hokey, like it was homemade or something. Two, we all know that professional paintball is played on nice, rolled out turf, with high end guns (Shockers, Egos, Dms/Pms etc), but this doesn’t even capture that. It looks like a run down field on the edge of the woods where players are playing woodsball.

From what I can tell it’s just not a great image that paintballers like to see. I’d like to see the hardcore I’ll mow your face side of it, but that just won’t happen in a big movie. I think it will be a let down, like one comment had mentioned on the last post, so I doubt I’ll ever get around to it.

This week I’m going to be featuring different ‘07 teams in my posts. A quick recap on the teams we’ve already covered:

NE Hurricanes
Dallas Elite
Avalance
Dynasty
Ultimate

A preliminary look tells me I’ll probably try to cover XSV Damage, Ironmen, Naughty Dogs, Joy Division, and the All-Americans, but that could change. So keep an eye out for an exciting week of predictions and rosters for the ‘07 season, helped along by stats from the events that have already been play like LAO and HB.

Think Dodgeball for paintball. Here is a true underdog story that I need to get my hands on now. Blackballed looks to be an actually decent independent film about paintball.

While leading his team to their fourth consecutive victory Bobby was shot. Desperate to stay in the game, Bobby intentionally wiped the paint from his jersey, thus committing paintball’s most heinous crime — “Wiping.� The three-time champ was banned from the sport and rejected by the paintball community.

Here’s the trailer!

Friendly Fire is hosting their next Young Gunz tourney this Sunday the 15th. This will be their second tournament on their new field set up, which I’ll say is very nice. They have doubled the width of the field, and maybe even the length a little bit, as well as installed grass-like turf. Their latest addition I saw from last weekend was the netted staging area for X-Ball style tournaments with penalty box included! But I don’t think that’s going to be the tourney format this time.

Young Guns 3-Man\Top Gun
April 15th
Must be 18 or under
$75.00 per team entry fee
Field paint only
Cash Prizes for 1st-3rd places
Amount decided by number of teams
Semi automatic only(no ramping)
Captains meeting at 8:30, first game at 9:00
Top Gun with crowd participation $5.00 per person with cash prizes

I’m predicting that the JFK team will sweep the tournament untouched, except maybe by Sadistic, which will place in a close second (for the third tourney in a row), and then followed by one of the MIA teams for third. We’re not playing this time for various reasons, mainly money, but also because we need to work on other things first before we give it another shot. Anyways, we’re hoping to make it up there to watch all the same, and probably take some photos.

Paintball, Paintball Tournament, Fiendly Fire Paintball

Okay, so it was me doing the nominating. Still though, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t head over to The Blogger’s Choice Awards and vote for a Paintball Blog to win!!! Think about how sweet that would be. If a paintball blog was to win the BCA for Best Sports Blog, that would really make people sit up and notice. So, it’s time to give back to the sport, and put your vote in!

Everybody knows that paintball is one of the most intense sports out there, and players lay a lot on the line, like money, careers, and friends. But now I realize where this all comes from, it comes from all the paintball companies suing each other over pointless crap (like $400,000 in this case)! We see more bickering and drama coming from the largest companies in the paintball industry than we do from high school girls (and the ones I know…well that’s simply amazing).

Here’s the official article.

April 4th
Originally Posted by Dale Ford
It would appear that Bob Long and his company, Bob Long Action Sports Technologies are suing Gino Postorivo, NPS, PBS Holdings, Inc. and AJ Holdings, LLC.

A scan of federal court records indicates that case #: 3:07-cv-01547-CRB was filed March 19th, 2007 in the Northern California Federal District Courts. At this time the complaint itself isn’t available on PACER, but a hearing notice has been issued in the case. While the specifics aren’t available, the documents indicate that Long and BLAST are suing over a contract dispute. The lawsuit indicates a possible reason why BLAST products are now being distributed by Archon Paintball, rather than NPS as they had been for several years.

As the details become available they’ll be reported here. Representatives for both BLAST and NPS have been contacted for comment.

Seriously, just pay your dues and move on. Or perhaps it’s the other way around; stop your whining and move on. This is paintball!

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Looking good in blue this year, the ‘07 NE Hurricanes are looking to take NPPL/NXL by storm. Aha. A pun. How witty of me.

Anyway, their roster looks ready to kick some ass. The thing I like most about this team is the fact of how close-knit it is. Many of these players have been playing with the team for quite some time, some since it’s founding, and even more previously were on the team and have rejoined them this season. They’ve also got just enough new blood to give the team some life.

Rob Landry
Dan “Cabbage” Savoie
Tom Buckley
Chris Dellas
Alex MacMaster
Eric “Rico” Gigliotti
Nicky Foglia
Steve “Son” Dabilis
Greg “Buddy” Hinthorne
Chris “Wedge” Wedge
Brian “Giggles” Gigliotti
Chris “Poo” Costigan

They also happen to have one of the nicest looking Pro jerseys I’ve seen this season.

I have a feeling we’re not reaching out to the real paintballers in this world, reaching out to our readers. Yeah, we do this as a hobby of our own, but we’d also like it to mean something to somebody. We want to know exactly your feelings on how we’re doing, what you might like to see more of, etc. Maybe you’re a speedballer and you want to see more drills and strategies for different field layouts. Perhaps you’re more into woodsball and want to know where the latest scenario games are being held, and the newest guns out on the market.

Personally, I like to see opinion on most things, and that’s what we kind of try to do with this: report paintball news with our very own take on it. So many paintball magazines and websites simply fluff up products to please the advertisers, or what have you, when in fact the product is pure crap. I like to see what people actually think of it, and I’d really like to see your views on things to know that we’re doing at least a halfway decent job at this site!

So drop us some much appreciated comments every once in a while, and don’t forget to check the contests section for the 451 Company where there are sometimes chances to win cash.

Last night I watched School for Scoundrels for the first time, a great movie that appealed directly to my more sophomoric sense of humor. Favorite line from the movie? “Sorry doesn’t make it manila.” Oh man, classic.

Anyway, imagine my delight and surprise when I catch wind that the “paintball scene” is coming up. I sat up in my seat, caramel popcorn clutched in my trembling hands, waiting for some great paintball hilarity. I won’t lie, it was awesome. Hilarious even.

But I couldn’t enjoy it fully because of one line. “No helmets, no goggles, no nothin’.”

Great, way to promote paintball in a positive way. It just isn’t cool showing this to people who will want to do the same thing, without masks. Oh well, still a great movie.

The morons are at it again!

BALLSTON SPA– A 34-year-old South Glens Falls man was arrested Wednesday following a road rage incident that resulted in one man shooting another in the face with a paintball gun, according to The Post-Star’s news partner, WNYT-TV NewsChannel 13.

Christian D. Gleason, of 53 Merrit Road, was charged with second-degree assault, a felony, Ballston Spa Police said.

The incident occurred after Gleason became involved in a minor accident with Scott Mayberry. Apparently angry, police said, Gleason shot Mayberry right under the eye.

Mayberry was treated and released from an area hospital.
Gleason was sent to to Saratoga County Jail and is out on $10,000 bond, according to police. He is due back in court May 7.

I mean what more can I say about this? We see it over and over again, and it’s always the same. Some idiot is goofing off, or gets mad, and then what do you know, it’s all over the news making us look bad. The problem, paintball guns are borderline between lethal and “nerf� like. They have to shoot hard in order for the balls to break, but yet they can’t be too powerful, so this naturally gives a person a good way to inflict paint without actually doing too much damage. Bah, will it ever end?

The trip up to Friendly Fire on Saturday turned out quite well. This gave me the opportunity to take pictures for an entire day, while Dana and another friend played. The indoor lighting is pretty pathetic, and that created some difficulties to work with, as well as learning what worked best took some time once I got there. I lot of them turned out blurry, but there were some cool ones. I’d rather try an outdoor field next time though.

Nothing special about them, but I’m glad I finally got around to it.