Trials and Tribulations of A Rookie Paintball Team.
Part 2 Our First Tournament
A month before our first scheduled tournament we were trying to figure
out a time and place to hold a team practice. Our first problem was
deciding where to practice. We talked about going to Stalker’s Players
club or Apocalypse’s Team Practice day, both were fairly cheap but the
days they were scheduled did not work into our schedule.
Well our problem was solved when Grizzly Steve decided he was coming
down from the mountains of Colorado for a visit. Grizzly Steve’s family
owns a nice plot of farmland in the Hillsboro area, which is centrally
located between La Crosse and Beaver Dam. Grizzly Steve said that he
would bring enough building materials with him so that we could build a
small speed ball course to practice on. Steve arrived in town on
Wednesday night and the following day we drove to Hillsboro. With
freezing rain coming down around us, we cut enough wood for the field.
After frezing our fingers and other unmentionable off, we decided we
would wait till Saturday when the rest of the team was there to put it
up.
On Saturday things started off going pretty well. Grizzly Steve, Nate,
and I wentup early to
start putting our field together. Brian, Jeremy, and
Clint were to arrive a bit later. The land were going to build the field
on was at the end of this long dirt road. One part of the road was
very soft and there was some concern about getting through.
Luckily Nate knew what he was doing and drove through it with only a
little push from Steve and I. We put up a small barricade so when the rest
of the team showed up they wouldn’t try it. As we got to work on
the bunkers we ran into another problem. The ground was still frozen
about a foot under, so we had pretty big gaps underneath the bottom of
our field bunkers. We stacked wood and brush in front of the
bunkers to cover the gaps. About half way through, Brian showed up with
our friend Khris and help us finish up. Khris is not on the team
but is a friend of ours and is always welcome to play. Jeremy and
Clint arrived shortly after we finished and we were able to start
practice.
Our practice basically consisted of us splitting into two teams of three
playing matches. One guy sits out alternately to run the video
camera. We had a lot of fun but in hindsight it wasn’t a very good
practice. Of course in our defense we really didn’t know what to prepare
for. One good thing we did get out of it was practice cleaning our
guns. We were shooting Java Paint that we had gotten on sale from
Paintballgear.com and the temperature was sitting at around 38 degree’s.
Well to make a long story short we had a lot of ball breaks and got a
lot of practice cleaning guns in game situations. We were able to
look at some of the photos that were taken too and we were able to fix
some problems with our form as well.
The next day Grizzly Steve drove back to his mountain home in Colorado
and the rest of us started to prepare for the April 13th
Stalker Trophy Dash. We picked this tourney to be our first one mainly
do to the cost. The Trophy Dash was super cheap and was billed to be a
practice tournament. We registered early. I made phone calls to everyone
on the team to make sure they had everything that they needed and that
they would be ready to go. There was some grumbling as to how
early we would have to get up and go (mostly from Brian) but when the
day came everyone was on time and ready to play. We met Jeremy and
Clint at Stalker right when they were opening the doors so we were one
of the first teams to fill out the forms and get our paint. We drove
back to where the field was and were one of the first teams to start
walking the fields. This was about the last thing to go right for us
that day.
Jeremy and I attended the captains meeting where we went over the rules.
There were 15 teams attending the trophy dash, which
was quit a few more then Mike and Diane, the owners of Stalker, were
expecting. At the meeting it was explained to us that we would be
split into two divisions and the top 3 teams would go on to a finals
bracket. We drew numbers to dictate what division and what order we were
going to play in. This is where things started to go wrong. We were
hoping that we would not have to play first. As luck would have it, I
drew the number that set us in the first match for the day. We had
problems at the crono range too. Just so you know, Brian, Nate, Troy and
I are still shooting Co2, (as it hasn’t been in the budget yet to buy a
compressed air tank.) Well the crono speed was set at 300 FPS for the
day. Brian and I couldn’t get our guns to shoot over 250 FPS and Nate
couldn’t get his to shoot under 300 FPS. Jeremy’s Bushmaster had blown
an O-ring or something and was leaking air. Now, being that we were the
lucky ones that got to go first, we had about 15 minutes to fix these
problems. Brian and I figured we’d just play at 250 FPS and not worry
about it. Jeremy grabbed his trusty Black Dragon and we had Nate sit out
so that he could clip his spring and get his gun ready for the next
match.
Our first three matches of the day were to be played on Stalkers
Hyperball course. They had a crono set up on each course for after match
cronoing. Well Brian decided he was gonna check his gun one last time
before stepping on to field. He set his gun on the Crono and pulled the
trigger. As our luck continued its steady downward dive, he broke a ball
in the breech and a piece of shell got stuck in his bolt and jammed it.
We had no tools with us on the field and it was time to start the game.
As Brian was walking on to the field he got his bolt loose and was able
to fire his marker again, but it was a mess and his accuracy was shot.
He needed to do a full field strip, but we didn’t have time, so he
played as was.
The whistle went off and our education began. The match lasted 90
seconds and needless to say we weren’t the winners. Our marker
problems weren’t quite over yet either. When I stepped up to crono off
the field my first shot read 326 FSP. I was horrified! So they had me
take three more shots, all of which were around 310 FSP and our team was
penalized 28 points. So after game one of the day we had a great
score of negative 28. I’m sure many of you who think back to your
first tournament can imagine how poorly we did that day. In our
next game we managed to get two elimination’s thus raising our score to
negative eight. Our third game netted us one more elimination that
brought us into the positive by two points. We were on a roll now!
After the lunch break we switched to the Air Ball field for our final
three games. I also picked up the schedule that I was
supposed to get at the team meeting. There was one other team
there that was also playing their first tourney and our epic match would
decide who went home in last place of our bracket. This highly
anticipated match was going to be the last match for our bracket of the
day. We dropped our next two matches with no eliminations so our score
remained Two and the other new teams score was 60 going into our last
match. We would need to get a max to beat them. Well, the match didn’t
start out so well. I got shot on the break and Jeremy got bunkered
shortly after. Clint was in the left stand up and Brian was in the right
stand up with Nate in the middle somewhere. Brian single handedly
cleared the right side of the field and got behind the other team. When
the smoke cleared Brian was the last one standing and got the hang.
The other teams final score for the day was 100 and ours was 102. WOO
HOO we weren’t last!
On the surface it looked like the day was a total disaster for Team
Wraith, but we weren’t expecting to win, we went to learn and get
experience and with those two goals in mind, the day turned out great.
The tourney was run very well and the refereeing by Team Gravity was
superb. We had a great time and when we do our next practice we
know what we need to work on. Well this ends Part 2. Thanks for
reading and I’ll have another one ready around the end of May.
Part 2
Story by Todd Lawrence
Team Wraith
May 2003
o hold a team practice. Our first problem was
deciding where to practice. We talked about going to Stalker’s Players
club or Apocalypse’s Team Practice day, both were fairly cheap but the
days they were scheduled did not work into our schedule.
Well our problem was solved when Grizzly Steve decided he was coming
down from the mountains of Colorado for a visit. Grizzly Steve’s family
owns a nice plot of farmland in the Hillsboro area, which is centrally
located between La Crosse and Beaver Dam. Grizzly Steve said that he
would bring enough building materials with him so that we could build a
small speed ball course to practice on. Steve arrived in town on
Wednesday night and the following day we drove to Hillsboro. With
freezing rain coming down around us, we cut enough wood for the field.
After frezing our fingers and other unmentionable off, we decided we
would wait till Saturday when the rest of the team was there to put it
up.
Brian, Jeremy, and
Clint were to arrive a bit later. The land were going to build the field
on was at the end of this long dirt road. One part of the road was
very soft and there was some concern about getting through.
Luckily Nate knew what he was doing and drove through it with only a
little push from Steve and I. We put up a small barricade so
when the rest
of the team showed up they wouldn’t try it. As we got to work on
the bunkers we ran into another problem. The ground was still frozen
about a foot under, so we had pretty big gaps underneath the bottom of
our field bunkers. We stacked wood and brush in front of the
bunkers to cover the gaps. About half way through, Brian showed up with
our friend Khris and help us finish up. Khris is not on the team
but is a friend of ours and is always welcome to play. Jeremy and
Clint arrived shortly after we finished and we were able to start
practice. 
Our practice basically consisted of us splitting into two teams of three
playing matches. One guy sits out alternately to run the video
camera. We had a lot of fun but in hindsight it wasn’t a very good
practice. Of course in our defense we really didn’t know what to prepare
for. One good thing we did get out of it was practice cleaning our
guns. We were shooting Java Paint that we had gotten on sale from
Paintballgear.com and the temperature was sitting at around 38 degree’s.
Well to make a long story short we had a lot of ball breaks and got a
lot of practice cleaning guns in game situations. We were able to
look at some of the photos that were taken too and we were able to fix
some problems with our form as well.
the trophy dash, which
was quit a few more then Mike and Diane, the owners of Stalker, were
expecting. At the meeting it was explained to us that we would be
split into two divisions and the top 3 teams would go on to a finals
bracket. We drew numbers to dictate what division and what order we were
going to play in. This is where things started to go wrong. We were
hoping that we would not have to play first. As luck would have it, I
drew the number that set us in the first match for the day. We had
problems at the crono range too. Just so you know, Brian, Nate, Troy and
I are still shooting Co2, (as it hasn’t been in the budget yet to buy a
compressed air tank.) Well the crono speed was set at 300 FPS for the
day. Brian and I couldn’t get our guns to shoot over 250 FPS and Nate
couldn’t get his to shoot under 300 FPS. Jeremy’s Bushmaster had blown
an O-ring or something and was leaking air. Now, being that we were the
lucky ones that got to go first, we had about 15 minutes to fix these
problems. Brian and I figured we’d just play at 250 FPS and not worry
about it. Jeremy grabbed his trusty Black Dragon and we had Nate sit out
so that he could clip his spring and get his gun ready for the next
match. 
schedule that I was
supposed to get at the team meeting. There was one other team
there that was also playing their first tourney and our epic match would
decide who went home in last place of our bracket. This highly
anticipated match was going to be the last match for our bracket of the
day. We dropped our next two matches with no eliminations so our score
remained Two and the other new teams score was 60 going into our last
match. We would need to get a max to beat them. Well, the match didn’t
start out so well. I got shot on the break and Jeremy got bunkered
shortly after. Clint was in the left stand up and Brian was in the right
stand up with Nate in the middle somewhere. Brian single handedly
cleared the right side of the field and got behind the other team. When
the smoke cleared Brian was the last one standing and got the hang.
The other teams final score for the day was 100 and ours was 102. WOO
HOO we weren’t last!
