Monday Monday Monday...

With the event being shifted due to the holiday weekend, everyone was trying to make it to Monday. The pump division was not without its drama in the Sunday-Monday transition. With 11 teams in the pump division, the initial call was to send the top 4 teams to the semi-finals. However, one of the teams pulled out the NPPL rulebook which stated if the divisions had more than 8 teams, 8 teams would go to the semi finals. Unfortunately, this happened over a few hours and some of the teams were already headed home. I think everyone made it back for Monday play some had to turn around while they were already on the road and find hotel rooms for the night.

The seedings for the top 8 teams were as follows:

Total Grief

Vigilante

Rockin Cocks

STL Stingers

FPPL Scrubs

Stones Knives

Rubber Duckies

University of Illinois

The University of Illinois brought their first match against Total Grief to 1 win-1 loss-1 draw, forcing a one on one. In an impressive upset, UoI sent Grief home. We (along with Vigilante and FPPL) won the first matchups in two games.

We took an upsetting defeat against FPPL knocking us out of contention for first place. It's a story involving mishaps, penalties and pain that I would rather not re-tell.

Our final matchup was against UoI for third. We had a strong first game...then the deluge came. Everyone had to wait out a storm for about 30 minutes before we could resume the finals. We dropped our second game against UoI but we were still in the running. We had a good sense for UoI's playing style and felt that we had a shot...as long as we stayed alert.

Just as the game started, the rain started to come down again. The game was down to 3 on 3 with me and Chrispy in the snake and Amish in the car wash. Each side dropped a body bringing it to a 2 on 2. This is where we had to stay alert and watch for the UoI trade. The snake corner player came down my wire and we traded, leaving Amish and one of theirs. The two players danced around in the rain shooting and moving and unfortunately, Amish bounced the UoI player and was shot shortly after. It was a tough loss but overall, we played solid paintball and are looking forward to playing DC.

Rocky and The Cocks...Two Day Recap

Saturday

So, two days of driving...the second one in a rental truck...we show up on Saturday ready to roll.

The cocks get geared up, greet some of the other teams and they were ready to rock. According to the schedule the Cocks were supposed to be the 5th or 6th game...and for some reason the chrono ref could not find us on the schedule. Needless to say, we were quite confused. Five RC's were literally standing at the nets, pods full and guns in hand and we were told that we were not on the schedule.

It turns out there was some confusion, the NPPL did not realize we were there and ready to play, so they had taken us off of the Saturday schedule and moved our games to Sunday. Gary Shows explained what happened. Apparently this new schedule was released at 8:00 AM Saturday morning. Gary walked us over to Frank and we got it all sorted out. We basically came to the conclusion that if there was time in the schedule and the refs agreed we would be worked back into the schedule. Dan Perez walked back over to the field refs and we got it all sorted out.

So...a car wreck, 12 hours of driving, last minute registration, not being on the schedule and we hadn't even played a game yet. Some would say maybe it wasn't in the cards but we weren't having it. We came to Chicago to play paintball and that's what we were going to do.

We played 5 games on Saturday and ended up 3 and 2. The first three games were a little rough. Only one win in that set and we were still trying to find our groove. Something clicked in game four and we won that game with 5 alive. Game 5 would have been another 5 alive except Amish managed to get a penalty for overshooting...with a pump. We were playing against Milwaukee Throwback and they had one player left in the right corner. O, Amish and Chrispy we all coming down on the last guy and here's how it went down. Owen and Chrispy both put a ball on the last player from downfield. Amish was coming up from the inside to bunker the player and had not seen a hand come out or a ref call the player out but he did hear someone say "he's clean". To be sure the player wasn't going to mug him and Chrispy he put one ball on the player. I think the "clean" comments came from the deadbox and so did the "overshooting suggestion". In the end, the refs assessed a 1 for 1 and we ended up with 3 alive and the hang.

We were glad to shift the momentum in our direction. We had some solid games on Sunday with 2 wins and 1 loss bringing our total record to 5 wins and 3 losses...good enough to put us in third place going into Monday. After everything we had been through we were glad to be guaranteed some play time on Monday morning.

Player Profile: Chrispy aka Five-O

Chris is one of the newer members of the Rockin' Cocks home team. He has been playing paintball for about 10 year but this is his first year playing pump. He has made a great transition to pump play and can usually be found in the snake working his way quickly down the tape line to do as much damage as possible as quickly as possible. Why do we call him "Chrispy"? I have no effin' idea but he's got the number 5-0 because he's a local law enforcement officer.

Chris has been instrumental in the Rockin' Cocks success both on and off the field. He was Spoon's right hand man with the Mason Thomas tournament and did a lot of legwork to get RC to Chicago...securing paint and finding an excellent fotog.

Chrispy pretty much shoots a CCM gun without actually having a CCM gun. Pump kit, frame, Auto Trigger, Internals, Bolt...everything is CCM except the body. Watch out though, he'll be adding a T2 to his arsenal shortly!