PSP Paintball World Cup 2012 this week!

This upcoming week marks the most exciting time of year for the paintball industry.  The 2012 PSP World Cup is taking place in Florida this week and will be a time for new product launches, fierce competition and new chapters in many paintball team franchises.  In addition to bringing back 10-man to the many divisions of speedball play, PSP has joined with the UWL to bring woodsball back to national paintball competition scene.

World Cup Product Launches & Vendors

PSP's World Cup has always been an important launching point for creating market buzz in the paintball industry and releasing new products for the next year's season.  It is arguably the largest paintball event in the world, with the most players(over 300 teams), the most fields, and the most vendors attending.

List of Event Sponsors,Vendors and Rumours:

Athletes Joined Against Spondylitis

BLAST

Bud Light
Carmatech Engineering:Their new SAR12 Tactical marker is an exciting looking First Strike compatible milsim rifle that is sure to draw a lot of attention.

Circus Spectacular
Contract Killer

Custom Products
Derder

Dye: Dye's new D.A.M. Tactical marker is expected to be released at Cup, as well as the new DM13 to continue the Matrix legacy.

Empire: A new mystery Empire marker has been spotted in the hands of a couple of Infamous players over the past weekend.  Appearing wrapped up in tape to hide the looks of the marker's design, not much is know about the marker, but rumours on PBNation suggest that it is a brand new high-end marker that will be released at Cup.  Hopefully we'll get more details this week.

Exalt Paintball
Fat Sam’s Concessions

GI Sportz

GOG

HK Army

Hungry Howies Pizza
JT
KM Straps
MacDev

Ninja Paintball: Ninja's air system's have been top-quality since their introduction to the market.  Their new Pro Regulator has the useful feature of having a rotating collar, which allows the user to rotate their tank reg to change placement of the gauge and fill nipple.  With this regulator, you'll never have the fill nipple in the way of your wrist again!
NXe
Paintball Media Group and Social Paintball
PBLife.com
PbRack Clothing

Planet Eclipse

Procaps Paint Trucks

Raza: Raza has plans to release new products at cup this year including a new line of polo shirts, jerseys, gloves, shorts and headbands.

RPS Paint Trucks

Sup’AirBall Bunkers
Tiberius Arms

Trade My Gun
Ultimate Paintball
Understood
UWL - Ultimate Woodsball League
Valken

Virtue

Canadians Playing World Cup

I want to take this opportunity to wish good luck to all of the Canadians from Ontario traveling down to Florida to play World Cup.  New Canadian teams of note include:

• Toronto Force D1:  Force is a brand new PSP team that is made up of veteran Canadian superstar players from the CXBL. Take a look at this Outside the Mesh Article for more info regarding this new powerhouse team.
• Alliance D3:  This is a new camp that will be making its premiere at PSP World Cup this week.  Made up of players from the Cambridge/Kitchener area including many from the CXBL and MXL divisions.  Alliance is planning on creating a camp for next season which will have teams ranging across most of the divisional games.

Alliance's World Cup jerseys, printed by Ntensity Customs

• SportsAgressor Moscow D3:  Although this is a Russian team, there are Canadian players on the roster and it is possibly the most exciting team in the division.  Coming together at the previous PSP Mid Atlantic Open event, two of my Canadian Express teammates joined up with the Russians to take on the American paintball scene.  After narrowly missing making the Sunday cut for finals, SportsAgressor Moscow is returning to shoot for the top this event and will definitely be a team to watch in D3 at this event.

SportsAgressor Moscow at PSP MAO, pic from PaintballPhotography.com

PSP Paintball World Cup 2012 Webcast From PaintballAccess

Continuing their great series of live webcasts for the 2012 PSP season, PaintballAccess.com will be returning for World Cup to bring live paintball to the online digital world. 

The live webcast is starting off this Wednesday with a World Cup Pre-Show.  This will feature paintball legends Matty Marshall, Todd Martinez and Chris Lasoya to get the latest behind-the-scenes news on teams, roster changes and player injuries.  You'll also get some analysis of the past PSP season to see what teams are expected to be on top and who to watch out for during the games this weekend.

Coverage for the rest of the event will include commentary from professional paintball players, interviews with players and of course intense paintball action during the event.  Webcast coverage will begin on Thursday and continue through Sunday's finals.  Pro team coverage will take up most of the webcast time, but we may get a chance to see divisional teams' games being broadcasted as well.  Be sure to watch the webcast this weekend if you've got some free time at home, wishing you were playing paintball in Florida!

Using the simple taglines, "Watch it. Love it.  Live it." 

Paintball Access is the place to be for everything paintball this week.

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.