Living the Dream: A Series on Tournament Paintball

Living the Dream: A Series on Tournament Paintball

Video clip: Heroes for a Day: the XSV Story intro speech

Anyone who has watched the epic paintball movies from the past decade has this idea in their heads.  Everyone wants that “Cereal Killerz” moment, or the “Heroes for a Day” season that gets remembered for years to come.  It all comes back to one idea: Living the Dream, traveling the world playing paintball with your friends.  It seems like it could be so simple, but there are endless hours of work and dedication that go into getting to that place, to forge the connections to have the opportunities to play paintball at the highest level.  

There's a reason they call it a dream: it's hard to reach that level of competitive paintball.  It's even harder to stay there.

I’m going to start posting a segment called “Living the Dream” to highlight some of my experiences over this past NPPL season and the early years, to give newer players and idea of the steps to take if they also want to seriously play paintball and chase the dream.  I will continue this segment in a series of posts which I hope people will find my insight to be helpful in their journeys.

Topics will include: 

• Getting into speedball and starting to play tournaments, from local series with throw-together teams, up to getting onto an established team and playing national events.  The team dynamic really comes into play for national events, as your teammates will become your family during the weekends and trips out of town for tournaments.
• A comparison on event scale between local single-day events, weekend-long national events, and even a few scenario days.
• The lifetime connections that come from playing on a committed team, getting sponsors and working tournaments to give back to the paintball community.  Opportunities to help and pit for professional and higher-level teams are also great experiences
• Giving back to the paintball community: setting up, promoting an running local events.
• Finally, I will raise the dark question that is in the back of every paintballer's mind that nobody wants to acknowledge: Sustainability.  Is it possible to keep up a competitive traveling paintball lifestyle as life and real commitments begin to get in the way?  How can players afford to keep up with costs of weekly practices and far off events, while also missing time at work to attend?  Any way you cut it, if you're serious about paintball, you will have to invest a great deal of time and money. 

All of these questions will be covered over the next few weeks, so check back for updates!  If anyone has any requests for insight or other topics to cover, feel free to ask!

 

A Canadian Paintballer Abroad

Hello and welcome to all of my new readers, followers and fellow bloggers.  I'm starting up this blog to keep people informed on paintball news and events around the world. I'm a local paintball player from the Windsor & Essex County area so no matter where I travel to play around the year, my focus always goes back to my roots at the local fields.

A little about me: I'm Shane Carter, I live in Windsor, Ontario, and attend St. Clair college.  I've been playing paintball since the end of gradeschool, began playing local tournaments through high school in Flagswipe's old PETS series (now the ESPL). For local fields, DieHard Paintball's outdoor field in Cottam has always been my number one choice for speedball, and the players are always make it a fun time.  Indoor, Windsor Rush is in the city and has a great facility with a fun rec-ball field and friendly staff.

I decided to go all-in to paintball with the Xball format in 2008 when I joined up with Sarnia Ntensity in the RXL division of CXBL.  Afterwards in 2009, Ntensity made a huge move and shifted sponsors to Flagswipe our of London, and we had the chance to practice with London Express CXBL for the season to get a stronger and more convenient practice schedule.

After the 2009 season, life picked up and paintball fell to the wayside.  I got a car, started university, ran out of money to play ball and ended up quitting for a couple of years.  Work, school and a social life kept me busy, but something was always missing.

Flash-forward to this year: I worked full-time factory jobs for two summers, built up some cash, and wanted something to do with my weekends and summer.  I started playing locally again and began my team search.  I ended up contacting my old team camp at Flagswipe, attended the Canadian Express tryouts and joined the team for the 2012 NPPL 7-man season.  I saw this as an opportunity that would do everything I was looking for: to play paintball (almost) every week, to help the community by running local events, to travel across the continent with a team of friends, and to experience the world of paintball as few others from Ontario get the chance to do.

In the 2012 season, I've followed the Express tradition of running the Empire Series Paintball League (ESPL) to give back to the paintball community.  Our team doesn't just play paintball, we make paintball happen and go through all of the work that other players may take for granted when they show up at the field: gridding field lines and squaring the field; cleaning, storing, and setting up bunkers, and setting up netting, staging, chronographs and all of the little logistics that go into maing a paintball tournament run.  We have had 5 events at Flagswipe's outdoor field this year, giving hundreds of players the change to play tournament paintball in two divisions: the 3-man Young Guns division and the 5-man Rookie division.  It has definitely been a successful season for the ESPL, and coming next will be Blizzard Ball at Flagswipe's indoor field on November 18th.