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