Paintball Journal

You have a general idea of what it was like at the beginning. Here is the story of my first gun and first field.

My first gun was a JT 3.5e Excellerator. If you haven’t heard of it, that’s probably just as well. It’s not a high-performing gun. At all.

It ran me about $70 in a package with a CO2 tank and a (TERRIBLE) mask. I paid for it all.

The gun itself weighed around four to five pounds. The board was capped at 7 BPS. It was bulky and uncomfortable.

I loved it. It was finally something to call my own, something that was comparable with what most of my friends had and that could put paint in the air. I improved my game dramatically through sheer confidence in my new equipment. By the end of the first month with the Excellerator, I could literally field strip it, clean and oil it, and put it back together blindfolded.

The only true drawback was the fact that its barrel threads failed miserably. I bought a Spyder threaded barrel that made it chop like no other, and was reduced to playing with the stock barrel from there on out.

I sold it to a friend to buy my Ion. I can still take it apart and put it back together from memory.

My First Field

My first field was Silver Spur Splat in Princeton, IN, roughly a 45 minute drive. I had never been to a true field until three or four years ago, when we went to try out for a team. That was a joke, but actually ended up helping us to make a friend who we still ball with today, and who has sold us a ton of gear second-hand. Anyway, the field fulfilled all of my expectations, and the owner inspired me to be as helpful as I try to be today. His name is Pops and I’ve never met a nicer field owner.

The field is a rec-ball oriented field, but drove me steadily down the path to become the tournament player I am today. As we visited the field more and more, I found myself attracted to the speedball fields, especially the hyperball field which had the first snake I’d ever seen.

To this day I have nothing but fond memories of that field, even though I’ve moved on to bigger and better things.