The National League... (of paintball). MAO part 1

PSP held their national yearly tournament in the Mid-Atlantic a few weekends ago. And guess who was there? You got it, me.

I always like to tell a story the way it begins, and in this case it's the drive to the event.

My event started with a one-hour drive to West Central Florida, near Wildwood on Tuesday night. I was going that way to meet up with the coach of the team I was going to play with the weekend; Speed playing D3 Race to-4 (Xball).The coach being Tim Altman, owner of Hudson's field Gator Paintball. The drive was the usual trip down the Turnpike and I met up with Tim and Bill around midnight. After meeting up we hit the road, north on I-75 eventually hitting I-95. Bill lead all the way up. Driving through the night and taking an hour rest break after hitting the South Carolina border, we arrived in Rock Hill at roughly 9:30am on Wednesday morning.
We immediately checked into the hotel and grabbed some much needed naps. By about noon we went to check out the event and walk the fields. The full team met up at the field at roughly 3 to go over strategy and for some to actually meet for the first time. One line of the team had practiced together before, the other 5 had never seen each other. I was one of the 5 who didn't know anyone on the team. After heading back to the hotel we talked and decided the lines, who would play with who. I was to play on the second line, the "throw together" line, and I was fine with it. I was my first national, big league event and any playing time for me was a triumph.

Thursday morning rolls around, wake up, load up, show up. Our first match was against Fierce, (us, a Florida team vs another Florida team). Our first line ran 2 back to back points, both ending in our victory. Then it was my line's turn. We started well, 5 bodies alive to the primary bunkers. I was playing snake. After about 3 minutes it was a one on one, me in snake and the other Fierce player running down the field on dorito side. He decided to try and run me down, but I threw a lane where I thought he would go and got him. Then I went and hung the flag, up 3 to 0. Then Fierce threw out their "A" game, beating us by winning the next 4 points. The last point was won because one of our players had a fast gun, a major penalty, leaving us to play the last point with 3 to start with.

More to come at a later post