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