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CHAPTER 6

TOURNAMENT

PAINTBALL

When playing with paintballs was first envisioned, professional players and well-organized international tournaments were the last possible thing in the minds of the founders. The founders were thinking survival. Could they survive if the government collapsed and they were on their own in a lawless land? Could they survive if the U.S. and the Soviet Union launched civilization-destroying nuclear strikes at one another? Could they survive if they were lost in the wilderness? Paintball was simply a way of testing themselves. It was a very personal, very individual thing.

But shooting balls of paint proved to be so much fun that the playing philosophy and venue evolved rapidly. Individual survival became team survival. Camo jammies in the woods became radical team colors and high-tech clothing on a playing field surrounded by high nets, bleachers for spectators, huge inflatable bunker-balloons and even television cameras. Paintball has become a much more varied game or sport than its founders imagined. Today, there is room for everyone (except people who will not play by the rules!) and every style of play. This chapter is all about how the pros do it … and yes, there are professional players in paintball.

Much of the coverage of paintball in national and international magazines such as Paintball 2Xtremes , Paintball, Paintball Games International and FaceFull is devoted to following the professional circuits, the NPPL, PSP and collegiate venues. Less than five out of a hundred people want to play at this highest level of competition … or maybe a lot higher percentage than that want to but won’t because it’s out of their reach. It’s sort of like wanting to win the lottery. Logically, we know that somebody is going to win, but let’s be honest, it won’t be us.

To the victor belong the spoils. JT USA’s Team Dynasty takes the 2003 World Cup in Toulouse, France.

What does it take to play professionally? Well here is what is unnecessary and may actually not be helpful. Spouse. Kids. Wealth. A lot of time spent in school beyond high school. It doesn’t take a steady job, either.

Great pro players come from all walks of life. You read their names in every magazine: Chris Lasoya , Rich Telford, Bob Long . Former greats include the likes of Oh Pawlak, Eric Felix and Shane Pestana. Oliver Lang , who plays professionally for Team Dynasty, says he loved skateboarding growing up as a California kid, but now he takes on the responsibility for getting his teammates pumped up before a game. He screams at them. He chants. He roughs them up … and they respond. They win. Not because they are in better shape or they want to win more or they have better equipment, but because, in the final analysis, Oliver says, it may be “all mental.”

DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES?

Playing paintball at the highest level takes Personal Commitment. It takes something mental. Your mind first. Your body follows. Understand this. It ain’t easy. Many are called, but few are chosen. Many begin on the path, but few go the distance. Can you go the distance?

To become a pro player, you need to find a way to make that goal #1 – numero uno – primero in your life. Everything else will need to take a back seat for a while. Girlfriend, school, job and even your family. Here are 12 “thoughtful spots” (yes, we ripped that off from Winnie the Pooh), places you can go mentally and physically to prepare for being a pro player once you have made the personal commitment. Six of these “thoughtful spots” are actions you can take and six are mental preparations. The mental side is the foundation for the action.

Six Actions

1. Read everything you can about paintball and playing paintball. You will learn about the equipment, other pro players and the pro competition circuits. Your sources will be magazines, books, company catalogs and the Internet.

2. Buy good gear. When you begin, you want good gear. It doesn’t have to be the most expensive or the very best … yet. You want to be able to take your marker apart and learn to fix things. You want to make upgrades yourself. You want to learn your gear inside and out and that includes some screwing up.

3. Play. That’s it. Play paintball every chance you get. Go to every rec field and scenario game you can possibly get to and check them out. Experience every situation. Immerse yourself in the paintball lifestyle and culture. Talk the talk. Walk the walk.

4. Get in shape physically. The best paintball players are fast, have extraordinary reflexes and good hand-eye coordination. Run. Swim. Lift. Dedicate your body to … well, not purity exactly, but health. No smokes. No chews. And if you drink … think moderation.

5. Travel to every event you can afford. Watch how today’s pros play, how they study shooting lanes, map out the cover and work as a team. Watch how they act on the break, how they communicate and how they react when they are sent to the dead box. Since paintball is played around the world, if you learn to read and speak a foreign language like French or Spanish or German, you will become invaluable for other players and companies.

6. Get to know everyone in the game. Become a part of paintball. Get autographs. Meet the KAPP girls. Ask for Bud Orr’s autograph. The more you belong, the faster you will approach your goal and the more you will hunger for it.

Six Challenges

7. Envision yourself as a pro player. Be a pro inside your head and your chosen path will appear. It’s a “Build it and they will come” thing. Be very careful here, however, that it does not become an ego thing. No one was ever the fastest gunfighter in the West for very long. The real pro becomes a servant to the game rather than expecting the game to be his (or her) servant. It truly is a Zen thing.

8. Write everything down. Personal commitment is meaningless if you only keep it in your head. After all, think about how many thoughts move through your head every day. Thousands. Millions maybe. If you will only take the time to write down your goal, maybe make a poster for your bedroom, you are half the way to your goal.

9. Minimize other commitments. If you want to be the best, you have to give up things that get in the way of that goal, whatever they are in time or money.

10. Live inside your dream. Expect that many people will want to turn you aside from your goal, and they often have good reasons for what they say and do. Your parents will want you to get a good education. Your girlfriend will want to spend Saturday at the beach rather than at the rec field or your boyfriend will want to go to the movies and then out for a party before a tournament. Your buddies will want to play computer games rather than field-stripping and cleaning your marker. Expect pressure and prepare for it mentally. Don’t get angry; get focused.

11. Decide what kind of pro player you want to be. Emotional or cool. What will you do to win? You will see some pro players lose their minds on the field. They argue with the refs and lose their temper. You will discover “that fine line” between what is right and what is wrong. Your job is to decide what side of the line you are going to walk.

12. The best pro player develops personal integrity. These are very basic principles of life and it takes some people, whether they are pros or not, a lifetime to learn them. Play fair. Be responsible for your actions. Treat other people the way you would want to be treated. Play with integrity and you will live with integrity. Live with integrity and you will discover that you have arrived.

When you have made the commitment and are ready to begin your path to becoming a professional paintball player, you will learn about today’s dominant professional circuits, the NPPL and PSP, the apparently declining APL and the promising NXL. There is also a smaller, but growing, collegiate league and there are international leagues in Europe.

In America, the NPPL and PSP pro circuits are the heart of the hype, the excitement and the passion. They are like the American and National Leagues in baseball and football. In paintball, the venues of the two major leagues are slightly different, but they are strikingly similar in format, spectator appeal and playing styles. So, in the remaining part of this chapter, we are going to profile the basic structure, objectives and rules of the NPPL and the earlier APL, because they give us a format for understanding the game of paintball as it is played at the highest and most popular pro level.

THE NPPL AND PSP

The National Professional Paintball League (NPPL at www.nppl.tv) is the sole sanctioning body for all amateur and professional paintball players in North America. It is a league where player representatives formulate league rules, make business decisions and sanction and preside over all aspects of an NPPL event. It was founded in 1993 and is the oldest such organization in paintball.

The NPPL wants to become the worldwide governing body of the sport of paintball “to ensure safe competitive play for our members and teams, and to support our players and the paintball industry by showcasing paintball as a major sport with integrity and professionalism at the highest level.”

NPPL Super 7

Since the NPPL considered sanctioning a new Seven-Man Series at the World Cup in Orlando, Florida, there has been some confusion and not a little speculation as to what this means to the teams and players who are currently part of the world’s largest paintball league. Here’s what the NPPL has written about its decision to part ways with the PSP and operate its own series:

“NPPL is a non-political governing body responsible for sanctioning quality paintball events and is committed to growing the sport at all levels. We are also dedicated to improving and maintaining the sport’s integrity and professionalism.

“Our goal is to create a positive environment that encourages new players into the game and to provide all players and sponsors with a top quality flagship paintball series with sound infrastructure that delivers on its promises.”

NPPL wants to legitimize tournament paintball by maintaining a body of independent pro referees to enforce rules and standards, referees who cannot be intimidated. Consequently, they must have the knowledge and authority to properly enforce the rules, specifically for cheating, foul language, physical altercations and threats, “which have not been properly addressed in the past.” NPPL has developed a strict sanctioning program to make all event organizers adhere to high standards and work with the teams and industry.

The NPPL Super 7 tournament series was formatted to “globalize” the game and make it more presentable to television, outside sponsors and spectators. The 7-man is a “very strategic game, fun to watch and easy to follow. It fits most venue possibilities.” The NPPL promised pro teams a minimum prize of $20,000 at each event, plus a $15,000 Champion’s Prize. There were also cash prizes for amateur ($40,000), novice ($30,000) and rookie ($20,000) teams. Here is how the NPPL characterized its new Super 7 Series for 2003:

Some good reasons to get into competitive paintball: You travel to cool tournaments, you get to wear very rad uniforms and some of your gear is sponsored (that means you only pay part of its cost). It’s exciting because you play some of the very best players. And you have cool tents and banners with your name on them. Jim Bergman of Troy, Ohio’s BASE Paintball sponsors the traveling team Ohio Turmoil . His guys placed 14th out of 72 teams in their 5-Man division at the Team Event’s 2003 International Amateur Open and won the Sportsmanship Award.

Big games attract big crowds. Most tournament formats do not allow spectators to coach from the bleachers. Whether they are 3-Man, 5-Man or 7-Man formats, rookie, novice or amateur level, games are short, fast and intense.

California’s Team Dynasty, sponsored by JT USA, en route to winning the 7-man World Cup in Toulouse, France, in 2003. To win at this level of international play, player reactions and teamwork have to be near perfect and equipment has to be the very best.

You never want to run out of paint in the middle of a game. Carry plenty of paint … and hitch a ride! Save your strength for the field.

Get ready. Get set. Tournament play at the International Amateur Open north of Pittsburgh in 2003.

For 11 years, the National Professional Paintball League (NPPL) has brought teams from around the world to the U.S. to compete against the best players in the sport of tournament paintball. For 2003, NPPL introduced seven-man play (supplanting the 10-man and 5-man matches of former events). Each team had seven players on the field with one goal in mind: eliminating enough opponents to capture their flag and safely return it to their flag station. These matches are limited to 10 minutes until the semi-finals when game duration drops to seven minutes.

Teams are awarded the following points for each game out of a possible 100 points per game:

1. Three points per eliminated opponent. If any paintball breaks on a player or their equipment, that player is eliminated from the game immediately by a referee. If the player continues to play after being hit, the referee has the right to pull one or more of the player’s teammates off the field as well.

2. One point per player who is not eliminated. Following the game, each non-eliminated player is inspected by a referee to ensure there is no paint on the player. For each “clean” player, that team earns one point.

3. 32 points for pulling the flag. Each team has a flag hanging in the other team’s flag station. If a clean player pulls their team’s flag from the opponent’s flag station, they are awarded 32 points.

4. 40 points for hanging the flag. The first team to have a clean player retrieve their flag and hang it in their flag station is awarded 40 points.

There are numerous referees on each field who are each assigned zones to watch. If a player steps out of bounds or is hit by a paintball, the referee will eliminate the player by removing the player’s armband.

The playoff system for all divisions (professional , amateur, novice and rookie) is as follows:

Preliminaries: 10-minute games with two minutes between games. Each team plays a minimum of eight games. The top eight teams from the professional and amateur division and the top 16 teams from the novice and rookie division go through to a quarter-finals.

Quarter-finals: 10-minute games with two minutes between games. Teams are seeded from points scored in the preliminaries, and the points are then cleared. The teams are split into divisions of four and play a round-robin format. The top team from novice and rookie divisions and the top two teams from professional and amateur go to the semi-finals.

Semi-finals: Seven-minute games with two minutes between games. Best of three format. Teams are seeded from points scored in the quarter-finals and the points are cleared. The first team plays the fourth team while the second and third teams play. The winning two teams go to the finals while the losers go to a playoff or consolation bracket.

Finals: Third and fourth playoff while first and second playoff. Best of three format in seven minute games. The first team plays the second team while the third team plays the fourth team.

Typical Prize Structure (Chicago NPPL Super 7 World Series 2003)

THE APL TOURNAMENT SERIES

The American Paintball League (www.paintball.apl.com (800) 541-9169) was founded in Johnson City, Tennessee. The APL has sponsored an eight-tournament series and established appropriate rules and venues for its operation. National Paintball Supply is one of the major presenting sponsors of the series, so all games use supplied Diablo tournament paintballs as the exclusive field paint.

Bob McGuire, who founded the APL in 1991, has since branched out into field insurance, a Paintball Training Institute and the tournament series. “We have wanted carefully planned timing for our tournaments,” Bob says, “so we schedule carefully, spend a whole lot of time coordinating tournament operations and make sure that all the prizes we advertise will actually be available. We are very player-friendly.”

APL Player Classification

First, no player less than 10 years of age is allowed in an APL tournament. So, all players from 10-up in age must be able to prove their age at registration or when the team enters the field.

APL classifies individual players as rookies, novices, amateurs or professionals according to the number of seasons they have competed in tournament paintball. Recreational playing time (running around in the woods with your buddies or shooting up your local field) is not included. But, after a player participates in his or her first tournament, their classification as an official APL “rookie” is established and it continues through December 31st of that year because typically, Bob McGuire says, paintball seasons – tournaments, point totals, standings – operate on a January 1 to December 31 calendar year.

Leaning into the shot.

A “professional ” is anyone who has played in a tournament on a pro team during the previous 12 months. A pro player may move back to a lower division by not playing as a pro for 12 consecutive months.

An “amateur” is a player with three or more seasons of tournament experience who has not played as a pro during the previous 12 months.

A “novice” is a player with fewer than three seasons of tournament experience who has not played as a pro or amateur during the previous 12 months.

A “rookie” is a player with less than one season of tournament experience who has never played as a novice, amateur or professional .

Such a rigid classification is designed to keep experienced players and teams from “sandbagging ” or dropping down into a less experienced division to give them a better chance of winning. All major tournament venues discourage such activity and may disqualify an individual or team that is discovered to engage in sandbagging. With the exception of the pro level, a player in an APL venue may play at higher levels without losing their status. For example, a rookie could play on a novice or amateur team during a season without losing his rookie classification. As soon as he plays on a pro team however, his classification changes to pro for a minimum of 12 months.

In collegiate arena league paintball, teams compete in fully enclosed thunderdomes. Shouting, screaming and yelling encouragement and directions is part of this game!

APL Team Classification

Just as it certifies individuals into different classifications to make sure play is fair and all players have an opportunity, the APL classifies registering teams.

A “pro team” is a team in which any member has competed in a tournament registered in the pro division.

Interestingly, an “amateur team” is allowed to field a pro player, but it is limited to a seven-person roster with a maximum of five players allowed on the field during a game. No substitutions are allowed for any reason.

A “novice team” may field one amateur but is limited to a seven-person roster, and it, too, is limited to five players on the field with no substitutions allowed.