Teamwork and competition. You’re going to learn a lot about them in paintball because the more you dig it, the more fun you are going to have and the more successful you and your buddies will be. It’s really a better gig than listening to your dad talk about how it was when he was a kid and had to walk to school.
And what about that other word, sportsmanship? What’s that got to do with anything, much less paintball? Well … everything. There are rules in paintball just like in an English classroom or sitting in a jury box. There were rules in cave man society. There are rules everywhere human beings live, work or play, because believe it or not, it’s the rules that we all observe that make our games possible.
The first rule of sportsmanship is Play Safe. If you don’t play safely, someone is going to get hurt, the game is going to stop, the refs are going to get angry and nobody is going to have a good time. So, never take your goggles off during a game or while you are on a playing field. Duh, dumb and dangerous. A paintball may not seem like much. It’s light and squishy. But a hit in the eye can cause retinal detachment, which means you will have pain (a lot) and, at least in one eye, it will seem like you are dizzy and the world is dark and fuzzy for a very long time. You won’t like that. And, of course, if you get hurt because you have ignored this primary rule, everyone else suffers, too. People yell at you. Your mother panics. The ride in the ambulance may be interesting, but you will be in too much pain to enjoy it. The field owner’s insurance goes up. Bottom line: wear your mask.
The second rule of good sportsmanship is to Use Your Barrel Plug or Barrel Cover absolutely every moment you are not on the field playing. An accidental shot could blind someone and get you thrown off a playing field or a team … forever. Who needs that? And by the way, it’s okay to remind someone that their barrel cover is not in place. If they don’t like it, too bad. Here is a situation where everyone must do the right thing.
The player’s party following the DraXxus International Amateur Open featured a boxed dinner, individual and team awards and dozens of free “door prizes” donated by paintball manufacturers. Debra Dion Krischke , who has been in the paintball business since the game’s founders recruited her in the early ‘80s, promotes this popular annual and international event in Pennsylvania.
Another reason we like paintball.
The third rule of sportsmanship is Honesty. Get hit? Get out. The paint didn’t bust? Well, ask the ref for a paint check or just sit out for a while. In a big game, you’ll be back on the field in a little while so use the time to rest, grab some water, squeegee your marker, load up with paint, check your air or eat a sandwich. In a tournament, you are going to see this rule bent to the breaking point (some people would say way beyond it) because money and pride and some pretty inflated egos are on the line. Tournament play is very fast, and even with trained referees right on the spot, it is sometimes hard to decide who was hit first. In recreational play and scenario games, it’s pretty rare to see anyone lose their mind. In tournament play, it happens all the time. You will hear a lot of talk about cheating in tournament competition. Don’t be a cheater and don’t accuse anyone else of cheating. Don’t start shouting, “You’re out! I hit you! You’re out!” Get over yourself.
A homemade, air-powered bazooka is a formidable weapon indeed!
The fourth rule of sportsmanship is to Put Yourself in The Other Player’s Position. This particularly applies to close shooting. The kid shot multiple times in the face at very close range at the 2003 International Amateur Open took one of the balls between his face and the edge of his mask with the ball traveling forward toward his eyes at a couple hundred feet per second (fps) or so. Very painful. It was most probably accidental because it happened very fast and with adrenaline levels very high. You don’t want to get hit at ultra-close range; it’s quite painful, it’s not macho and it will leave a nasty little bruise. Give your opponent a chance to surrender before you stick the muzzle of your marker in their back and pull the trigger. Point and shout first, “You’re out!” Give the person a chance to surrender and raise their marker over their head. If they turn and act like they would prefer to shoot it out with you at 10 feet when you’ve got the drop on them, well, what are you going to do? Let ‘em have it!
CHAPTER 2
IN THE BEGINNING
Unlike horseback riding or archery or darts, we know precisely when paintball was invented. We know who did it, too, and even why. Or do we? Well-known attorneys who act in the public’s interest, such as Mary O’Rourke of Florida, are schooled to understand that the testimony of eyewitnesses to a crime, for instance, will vary by a wide margin. They may even conflict, depending on their point of view or their interest in the outcome. Even the testimony of actual participants differs, and the further you are from the events themselves, the greater the participants’ versions will diverge.
VERSION 1
In 1976, a 35-year-old guy named Hayes Noel went for a walk in the woods near Charlottesville, Virginia. The woods were on a farm that belonged to a buddy, because Hayes was from New York City.
Actually, Hayes may have been feeling a little bit insecure that day. He has said he was troubled by a philosophical question, but it may have been more personal than that. If the world went to hell in a hand-basket – as it showed every sign of doing in those days – was he tough enough, resourceful enough to survive?
Now, Hayes never went to Viet Nam. He was not a big-game hunter or a Harley rider. He was a New York City stockbroker! But wasn’t making a living on the New York Stock Exchange practically as heart-pounding as stalking a wounded Cape buffalo in the long grass of Zimbabwe? Competition is competition, right? Cut-throat is cut-throat. If beetle-browed cold warrior Leonid Brezhnev touched off the Soviet Union’s big nukes, and he wasn’t killed in the initial blast, Hayes wondered if he could do whatever he had to do to survive. He really was not sure, but who could be if the unthinkable happened?
Hayes had a lot of friends. He eventually brought up his survival insecurities with George Butler and Charles Gaines . Charles was a writer and outdoorsman who lived in New Hampshire. Inside Hayes’ circle, this survival debate grew with sides roughly forming around these two philosophical positions:
1. Country people would survive some kind of holocaust better than city people because people in the country grow up hunting, fishing and practicing skills that would help them adjust to a world that had suddenly turned hostile.
2. City people would cope better in emergency situations because they learn survival skills in places like the subway or even on the chaotic floor of the stock exchange – a rather intense example of cooperation and competition all mixed together – where country people, admittedly more attuned to nature’s pace, would go bonkers.
So, Hayes invented paintball.
No, of course it wasn’t quite that simple.
VERSION 2
While grilling king mackerel and drinking gin and tonics on the patio of a home on Jupiter Island, Florida, in 1977, Charles Gaines and Hayes Noel came up with the initial concepts of a survival game as a lark or just for fun. The practical problem was finding the right equipment and getting a place to give it a shot.
Their