Trials and Tribulations of A Rookie Paintball Team.
Part 3 The Season Continues
Let me begin by apologizing for how late
this is, my summer has been really busy, and I have not taken the time
to write. I know you are all anxious to hear what trials have
happened to Team Wraith in the last 3 months so I will get right to it.
After our disappointing
performance at the Stalker Trophy Dash we had many discussions about
what went wrong and what we needed to do to fix it. We had a
practice two weeks after the tournament where we focused on the areas
that needed the most work. We ran drills for lane shooting,
sliding into bunkers, snap shooting, and a few more drills we made up.
We finished the day with some 3 on 3 matches. Unfortunately the
area we practice at is very remote, and were ran out of air before we
ran out of paint. Still, we went home feeling that we were much
improved than when we started the day.
Our next tournament was
the second Stalker Trophy Dash. The picture of the person sliding
through the mud puddle isn’t one of us, but it gives you an idea of the
conditions we were playing in. Aside from being very wet, it was also
cold. We spent most of the day huddled under Stalker’s canopy with
4 other teams sharing the five picnic tables under it. The weather
may have been rotten, but at least our play seemed to be coming together
at last. Our first match was against the Flying Balls, and
all of us made it to their assigned bunkers off the break. I was
in the snake (that was fast becoming a stream) with an opponent moving
in from the other end. Both teams had two markers malfunction
early on in this match due to the weather, and luckily for me, the guy
in the snake was one of them. I was able to eliminate him while he
was trying to get his marker going again, and I moved up the snake. From
there I was able to eliminate two more of the opponents as my teammates
moved in to eliminate the last two, which gave us the win. It was a
great way to start the day.
During our second game, our inexperience
reared its ugly head, and we lost due to a host of dumb rookie mistakes.
Our third game of the day was against
Outrage. Outrage had beaten us quite handily at the first trophy
dash, and we were looking for some revenge. We fixed several of
those rookie mistakes that cost us the previous game, and walked out of
this one with three bodies still alive, plus the flag pull and hang.
At this point, we were feeling pretty good.
With six guys on our
team, we were running a rotation so everyone could play. For our
fourth game of the day it was my turn to sit out. It was at this
point that we made a big mistake that cost us what should have been a
win. I’m not saying that I’m so great that my team couldn’t win
without me, because that would not be correct, but I almost always am
the one going for the snake. What I feel cost us the win was that
no one took my spot in the snake. The team we were playing against
only had four players, and with a man in the snake we should have easily
gained firing angles and dominated them. With no one in the snake
to keep their heads down, they used there more experienced shooting
skills to eliminate us one at a time. This is where I saw Jeremy
Compton do one of the coolest (and funniest) things I have ever seen.
With only Troy and himself still active it was a two on four game.
Jeremy decided he was going to go for a flag pull and without any
warning he took off across the field, straight for the flag. At
full speed, he dove over the bunker, grabbed the flag, and then was
flipped head over heels as his legs caught the on bunker. The
resulting face plant into a growing puddle was worthy of a place in the
greatest of sport blooper reels. We didn’t get the win, but we got
a pull, and a good laugh.
After lunch we switched to the Air Ball field for the rest of our
matches, where we lost the next two. Our third and forth games on
the air ball field were against Twisted and Surgical Strike. We
knew that Twisted was a rookie team like us, and we had watched them
play several games. With what we had seen, we were able to develop
a good strategy for the match, and walked away with a max score.
This brought us to our last game of the day against the current point
leader, Surgical Strike. Going into the game we decided we were
gonna throw A LOT of paint, and try get at least two eliminations.
This turned out to easily be the best game we had played all summer.
We communicated well (which had been a weak point), moved well, and we
shot well. Our team won with another max score, and Surgical
Strike had to settle for second place. All in all, we had a great
day despite the cold, rainy weather. Everyone on the team felt
good about our performance, and it seemed Team Wraith was starting to
pull it together.
We decided to have another practice two weeks later, but it didn’t go as
well as we had hoped. We had a couple of guests (non-teammates)
come to practice with us, and it turned into a day of rec ball.
The day was certainly fun, but lacked the structured drills that a true
practice should have. We found that in our next two tournaments at
Apocalypse, a day of serious drilling would have been very useful.
We still had a lot of things to learn and practice.
In my opinion, we played
pretty bad. Still struggling with lazy communication, we never
developed a good game plan for any of the fields we played. We
didn’t move and advance up the field when we should have. To me,
it felt like our ‘team’ was just going out and playing as individuals.
On the day of the five-man rookie, the fields were much smaller, and had
fewer bunkers than we had ever played on before. The day wasn’t a
total loss, there were some important lessons learned, and some things
we needed to work on became painfully obvious. It was also
exciting playing against some very good teams as well.
On a different note, earlier this summer a
new paintball store opened up here in La Crosse. The owners of
Tri-State Fire and Safety already had all the equipment needed to do CO2
refills, and decided to start doing it for a little extra cash on the
side. Tri-State figured they would also carry a few paintball
accessories and some CO2 tanks to go with their small fill business.
Well, since there are no other true paintball stores in the area, demand
for one was higher then they had expected. They were soon carrying
paintballs, a few markers, and their inventory has been increasing
everyday since. It’s been great finally having a paintball supply
store right here in town. In fact, while “talking shop” one day
with the owners, and sharing some of the things we have learned the past
few months, Team Wraith found itself with an official sponsor –
Tri-State Paintball Supply. A couple of us even have a new
part-time job, too.
I’ll let you know how well we learned our lessons in the next
installment, which I’ll write after our last tournament of the season.
Until then, keep the paint flyin’.
Part 3
Story by Todd Lawrence
Team Wraith
March 2003
After our disappointing
performance at the Stalker Trophy Dash we had many discussions about
what went wrong and what we needed to do to fix it. We had a
practice two weeks after the tournament where we focused on the areas
that needed the most work. We ran drills for lane shooting,
sliding into bunkers, snap shooting, and a few more drills we made up.
We finished the day with some 3 on 3 matches. Unfortunately the
area we practice at is very remote, and were ran out of air before we
ran out of paint. Still, we went home feeling that we were much
improved than when we started the day.
Our next tournament was
the second Stalker Trophy Dash. The picture of the person sliding
through the mud puddle isn’t one of us, but it gives you an idea of the
conditions we were playing in. Aside from being very wet, it was also
cold. We spent most of the day huddled under Stalker’s canopy with
4 other teams sharing the five picnic tables under it. The weather
may have been rotten, but at least our play seemed to be coming together
at last. Our first match was against the Flying Balls, and
all of us made it to their assigned bunkers off the break. I was
in the snake (that was fast becoming a stream) with an opponent moving
in from the other end. Both teams had two markers malfunction
early on in this match due to the weather, and luckily for me, the guy
in the snake was one of them. I was able to eliminate him while he
was trying to get his marker going again, and I moved up the snake. From
there I was able to eliminate two more of the opponents as my teammates
moved in to eliminate the last two, which gave us the win. It was a
great way to start the day. 
With six guys on our
team, we were running a rotation so everyone could play. For our
fourth game of the day it was my turn to sit out. It was at this
point that we made a big mistake that cost us what should have been a
win. I’m not saying that I’m so great that my team couldn’t win
without me, because that would not be correct, but I almost always am
the one going for the snake. What I feel cost us the win was that
no one took my spot in the snake. The team we were playing against
only had four players, and with a man in the snake we should have easily
gained firing angles and dominated them. With no one in the snake
to keep their heads down, they used there more experienced shooting
skills to eliminate us one at a time. This is where I saw Jeremy
Compton do one of the coolest (and funniest) things I have ever seen.
With only Troy and himself still active it was a two on four game.
Jeremy decided he was going to go for a flag pull and without any
warning he took off across the field, straight for the flag. At
full speed, he dove over the bunker, grabbed the flag, and then was
flipped head over heels as his legs caught the on bunker. The
resulting face plant into a growing puddle was worthy of a place in the
greatest of sport blooper reels. We didn’t get the win, but we got
a pull, and a good laugh. 
In my opinion, we played
pretty bad. Still struggling with lazy communication, we never
developed a good game plan for any of the fields we played. We
didn’t move and advance up the field when we should have. To me,
it felt like our ‘team’ was just going out and playing as individuals.
On the day of the five-man rookie, the fields were much smaller, and had
fewer bunkers than we had ever played on before. The day wasn’t a
total loss, there were some important lessons learned, and some things
we needed to work on became painfully obvious. It was also
exciting playing against some very good teams as well. 
