Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Paintball Barn Tournament

I know I am going to sound like a hypocrite, but I did play in a tournament this past weekend. It was at the Paintball Barn in Attica, Indiana. As I expected, when I first arrived at the field it was absolutely freezing and I started cursing myself for agreeing to play in this weather. But after a while the adrenaline made me forget about the cold and in the end I am glad I played because it gives me the chance to address some things.

The tournament was run on two fields which was interesting because I have never played in such a tournament. It was cool how the refs coordinated the games on both fields so that the games were played at the same time. They gave all four teams playing 30 seconds to get ready before the 10 second count. This made it so both fields were on the same schedule instead of one field being ahead of the other. It was a really good idea, but later in the day it just became tedious, especially in the finals when all of the teams were ready to go and knew what they were doing. It just made the whole process take longer.

My team consisted of me, a guy I know, and two guys that he knows that I had never met. This spelled disaster from the start. Teamwork is the single most important aspect of paintball and if you do not know the people on your team, you will not work well together. We were not a team. We were individuals trying to do it all by ourselves. Looking back on the whole day, we all played well, but no amount of experience, skill, or talent can out play good old-fashion teamwork. Clocktapus says "your team mate must be like your brother in order to work well together."

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