Rockin'Cocks take 2nd at PSP World Cup

Courtesy of Jani Anderson, Paintball Photography.com

World Cup 2012 preparation started for the Rockin’ Cocks in the cold winter months of February when it was agreed upon to play 2 events in the PSP series and attend World Cup 2012 in Polk City, Florida.  The team knew that if they wanted to succeed at World Cup they needed to have the dedication to practice regularly and attend some regional and local tournaments.   Various forms of the RC squad traveled throughout Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, and Illinois to participate in the CFOA pump series, PSP Chicago, and the Mid Atlantic open held in Chesapeake City.  It was a long several months leading up to World Cup, but it would turn out to payoff for the Rockin’ Cocks.

Courtesy of Jani Anderson, Paintball Photography.com

            Dana Colegrove (PigPen) and Joe Turner (Ninji) arrived in Florida on Thursday to take in all the sights and sounds of World Cup.  Thursday and Friday were filled with watching some divisional games and taking care of our paint deal, GI Sportz, and of course checking out the 10-man event.  Friday night the remaining team members Alex Myers (Amish), Scott Swartz (Scottie Don’t), Chris McDaniel (CMcD), and the weekend’s honorary member Brittney Miller arrived in Orlando.  Our last two teammates Patrick Flood (P Flood) and Kevin Peiper were already in Florida.  Saturday was filled with more divisional games, and walking through the trade show.  RC wrapped up at the event early on Saturday, so they could have a good team dinner and get their rest for Sunday.

            Saturday night the brackets were released and the times set for Sunday.  RC drew Dallas Notorious  (winner of PSP Galveston 2012), NBK, New Pump Invasion, and Blitzkrieg.  RC registered at 7 am and continued to prepare for their first game against Blitzkrieg.  RC started strong with its first win of round 1 in 2 minuets and 23 seconds.  The next team on the docket was NBK.  NBK had a very aggressive break out to S3 and D1, but RC didn’t panic and shot them out of their bunkers and hung the flag in 2 minutes and 32 seconds.  RC won its first point against New Pump Invasion. Dallas Notorious worked there way up the D-side to hand RC its first loss in Round 1. RC’s record after the first round was 3-1.

Courtesy of Jani Anderson, Paintball Photography.com

            The second round started with Blitzkrieg and RC closed them out in 3 minutes and 2 seconds.   RC knew that closing games out was key to getting a buy into the quarter finals, so we went out and finished off NBK and got a 36 second crazy win against New Pump Invasion.  Our final game in round two was against Dallas Notorious.  RC broke out to their initial bunkers and started battling it out with Dallas.  Kevin worked his way into S3 and Joe down the D-side.  RC got a few key K’s out of the D-side and center, but their snake player was holding it down.  Kevin ran down their snake and traded out, but got a 1 for 1 called on him for supposedly sliding back into the snake after he had been shot.  The refs pulled Pigpen leaving P-Flood and Amish.  P-Flood traded out with their back center leaving no one left for Dallas Notorious.  Amish thought that Patrick had grabbed the flag on the way through, hanging it once the back center was gone.  Unfortunately that was not the case as P-Flood traded out and everyone was gone on RC so we couldn’t tell Amish to get the Flag.  This chain of events happened rather quickly, so I could understand Amish’s confusion with people walking off the field.   Since we did not hang the flag the game resulted in a tie. 

Courtesy of Jani Anderson, Paintball Photography.com

            Since the second game with Dallas Notorious was a tie we needed to play a third game to break the tie.  Amish made up for the second game by coming out shooting like an AC-130 Gunship getting a 4 pack. Our win in game 3 was faster than Dallas’s 1^st game win, so RC finished the preliminaries 4-0 and in second place.  

            RC relaxed and scouted the other teams while they battled it out in the quarterfinals.  Once the dust settled RC was matched up against Biltz and the other matchup was Tennessee TrueBallers and TPG AllStarz.  RC broke out with Kevin in S1, Pigpen in God, P-Flood and Amish burning at home and Joe breaking out to the D-side.  RC traded out a K early and the 4 remaining locked down the field.  Blitz got another K and started to push down the field. RC tried to hold off the attack, but ended up with a 2 v 1.  After Blitz had the last K the flag was hung, but the hang was dirty resulting in a tie.  The second game went much like the first with another tie because of another dirty hang.  Since there were two tie games the third and final game would be and unlimited time game with the winner moving on.  RC broke out to their bunkers and started getting some K’s in the middle of the field.  This allowed Joe, Amish and P-flood to move up the field and get the last K’s sending us into the finals.

Courtesy of Jani Anderson, Paintball Photography.com

            The finals came down to showdown between the top ranked Tennessee TrueBallers and RC which was the second ranked team going into World Cup.  The first game RC went to their primary bunkers with Kevin in S1, Pigpen at God, Joe and Amish holding down the D-side and Patrick at the command center in the middle.  RC and Tennessee battled it out and tried to advance up the field, but each team was holding strong.  Pigpen got a K in S3 reliving some pressure on the D-side.  RC then began to work up the field leaving the last guy in S1.  P-flood advanced up the middle bunkering him out leaving 48 seconds on the clock.  The next game both teams got into their initial bunkers and started holding the field down.  The TrueBallers had someone at home, god, S1 and two on the D-side.  Their S1 moved into S3 and god S1 and home moved into the snake corner.  Our D-side was locked down and we locked their snake side down.  Tennessee got a K out of our D’s and we still held of the advance.  Time was running down and the TrueBallers made a push hanging the flag with 3 seconds to spare.  To no ones surprise the always-competitive pump division would end with a third came.  Both teams ended up using a similar approach as the previous game, but Pigpen went into S-corner to help control god and get Kevin farther down the snake.  Time was coming down to an end with only P-flood and Pigpen left.  Tennessee ended up shooting us both out and hanging the flag with 3 seconds left. 

            RC was upset that they had just lost in the finals, but after the dust had settled we realized that we fought hard all day. We played some really good teams from all over the US and Puerto Rico and showed that we could compete nationally in the PSP.  We would like to Thank Sandana, Exalt, Stiffi, Raza, GI SPortz, CCM, Pev’s, KPS, Fireduppaintball.com, Lifestyle Clothing, and MCB for providing us with some of the best gear and support as we competed in the PSP, CFOA and any other local and regional event we could squeeze in. RC had a great 2012 and hopefully a better 2013. 

Here's a short vid of RC on the podium:

Getting ready for Cup

So it’s that time of year again, the leaves start falling and the end of the paintball season is upon us. But before all is said and done we have one last event left to play PSP World Cup.

                The team has had a hell of a year thus far and we hope to end it on a strong point. So far this year we’ve done well in the PSP, we came in 5^th at PSP Chicago, 1^st at PSP MAO and are currently ranked 2^nd overall in the series. The roster for PSP World Cup will consist of Patrick, Scottie, Amish, Nengi, Dana and a special quest Kevin! Practices have already begun well before this event but who am I kidding, we’ve been practicing all year for this event.

                The next two weekends you will find the team at KPS Paintball in Richmond and Paintball Adventure Park (PAP) in Maryland if you care to come out and join us on our quest to WIN WORLD CUP!

RC take 2nd at NPPL... or are denied 1st perhaps.

                This past weekend was the NPPL DC event held at Pev’s Paintball in Aldie, VA. However, those that played the event, me included called it several different names throughout the weekend, of which none were positive.

                I have been a long time supporter of the NPPL and have made it a point to support a league that first took the initiative to offer a pump division at a national level. However, in the last few years the league has begun to care more about money, fame, and the professional players then those at the divisional level who pay their way and support the league. Now for those that don’t play pump or stay in the know should know that at the beginning of this season the NPPL canceled the pump division.  However, after much criticism they brought the division back with a higher than ever entry fee. I had made the decision after they canceled the division that RC would not play any NPPL events this year, except for NPPL DC. The plan was to cash in our free entry voucher and play up a division for fun; however, the NPPL would only let us use the voucher for pump, which was fine with the team and me. Either way we were playing this event just because it would be cheap and we wanted a chance to finally win a NPPL DC (prior to this we had two 2^nd place finishes and a 5^th place finish at this event) event, which has been something we have been trying to do for 4yrs. 

                Now with the above all said and done, I went ahead and signed us up when the time came. Now I like to consider myself someone who is update on most tournaments, rules, etc, however, I always like to double check things I cannot find out on my own. Now in years past the DC event has always been a one day pump event (or two days) because the turnout is usually smaller than the other events. However, this year all the pump games have been played in a day (or at least that’s what I’ve heard or could find online). The only issue was that “day” has been different from event to event. I emailed the NPPL and asked them if they knew what day the event would be, in return I received a reply that stated they wouldn’t know until all the teams signed up, but they were planning on playing pump in a single day and would know more as the event grew closer. As the event grew closer I asked again and to their best knowledge pump would be played on one day, but they still didn’t know which one. I even went as far as to ask a second person within the NPPL to confirm this information for me and they stated one day as well. I made the team aware that the event would be one day, however, which day I did not know. The event grew closer and I was still awaiting an answer to which day we would be playing with much anticipation, however, an answer never came as promised and the schedule was released at 9PM the Tuesday night before the event. To my surprise the pump division was playing all three days of the event. I called the guys playing and after much bitching and scrambling everybody was able to get Friday off, so they could play the event. However, Thursday was the official check-in date and only 3 of the 5 playing could make it to the venue on time to check in (some guys just couldn’t get Thursday and Friday off on such short notice). I personally couldn’t make it until Friday morning so Dana, sat in at the captains meeting for me.  Dana was assured in the captains meeting that the NPPL was going to provide us with the best tournament experience ever and that if you needed anything Ed Poorman has dedicated the rest of his life to making the NPPL great. Ed also made it clear that he was the person to contact about tournament issues, because he had the time to investigate our problems.

                Friday rolls along and our first game is at 8:35am (games started at 8am) on Field Three. Now let me tell you about Field Three first…Field Three is the practice field used for this event, it has no air hook-up and you had to go to the turf fields’ pits to get air. It had netting on two sides of the field, so no spectators could watch (at the captains meeting we were told spectators to go get pit access to watch for free, however, when we tried this we were charged $10 a person and even after we tried to explain we still had to pay the $10 a person). The boundary lines were wrong and when we asked about them being extended to 5ft on each side as we were told this in the captain’s meeting. The head ref had no knowledge of this and when he did learn this only extended the snake side, despite all the other fields having both sides widened. Back to topic of an 8:35am first game, anybody that knows me knows I like to be early and ready to go. Since we needed to walk the field as a team still, pull paint, get two players checked in and get geared up, I advised the team to be at the field no later than 6:15am. When I arrived it appeared all was going well, the unchecked in players were checked in, the guys were getting ready, I pulled our paint, we walked the field and by 7:45am we were ready to go. Now I want to talk about the paint for this event for a moment, the NPPL is sponsored by Valken and supposedly you can only shoot Valken paint unless you’re a pro, because they can shoot whatever. We go to pull our paint and normally you test a few balls from each batch and figure out what is working best. Valken however just hands you a case of paint and there is no testing. We decided to shoot Valken Pro because we were told it was good and shouldn’t have any problems. However, this crap was deformed and rock hard. The regular Redemption wasn’t much better, but the positive part was it was around .689 bore size depending on what ball you tested. 8 AM rolls around when the first game is supposed to start and the field still has some deflated bunkers, and the refs are standing around talking, so at 8:30ish the first game is played and I assumed we were good from there. However, game three of the day on this field was the first pump game and the teams playing were no shows. After standing around waiting the game against West Coast Sharks and West Coast Nation was skipped and the teams continued playing. When it came time for our turn we were skipped right over and when I inquired why, I was told because the team we were supposed to be playing was playing a game on another field in another division and when they finished they were coming over to play us. I relay this news to the team and we begin our waiting game. Around 9:45am everybody is starting to become upset as the other teams have yet to show up and the other teams playing in the other division are just about done playing and we have yet to play a game. I go back over and inquire and learn the other teams playing don’t want to play pump yet because they want to finish their other division’s games first. To be honest I was cool with this, not thrilled but okay. What pissed me off was no one said a word to us about this until we had to go up and ask, so now were told our games would begin at 10:30am. We continued to wait, some guys went to watch games, others to check out the vendor’s area and I went and looked for the other teams’ captain. Now the reason I did this was because I have been told the pump games will be the last games played on this field, so I had the idea of why not play all the pump prelim games now and this way tomorrow we don’t have this schedule issue and nobody has to wait or be rushed. I find the other teams’ captain and he’s cool with this and we began our search for someone that could make this happen and after talking with several people, we were told this couldn’t happen because it wouldn’t be fair to the refs and that the schedule issue won’t happen because they changed the Saturday schedule (nobody knew about this until that moment). I went back to our pits and got everyone ready to play our 3 games scheduled for the day. Our 1^st game of the day took place a little after 11am.  The first game was against West Coast Sharks 2.  The Sharks had a very aggressive breakout to the 50-snake, 50-wedge, 30-can, D1 and snake corner.  The 50-snake player was burned off break, but the corner filled the snake immediately.  PigPen was also clipped in the pack on the breakout, thus leaving the snake vulnerable and the Sharks used that to their advantage clearing the RC players one by one.  Our second game was against the West Coast Nation and the outcome was much better.  RC made it to all of its primary bunkers, Pigpen cleared out their 50 snake and wedge while Ninji and Amish cleaned up the D-side.  So after playing two games we were 1 and 1, Sharks 2 is 3 and 0 and Sharks Nation is 0 and 3.  We were waiting for our 3^rd game but we were told there are no more games for the day and our last game must have been moved to Saturday. While, the team gets ready to leave I attempt to locate the new Saturday schedule. Now this should be easy, go to registration ask for the new schedule, sha’zam new schedule, however, this is the NPPL. I go ask Valarie for the new schedule and she gives me the old one. I explain this and she tells me she doesn’t know what I’m talking about and to find Tony, so I go around the pits and find Tony and after his smart ass comments about this he takes me to Ryan who makes the schedule and prints me off the new schedule. While walking back to the truck I realize we only play 5 games on Saturday and that gives us a total of 7 games. I counted the other team’s games and I realize Sharks 2 have 8 games and Sharks Nation also has 7 games. The missing game we were supposed to play today had not been included on Saturday’s schedule. I went back to registration, found Ryan and explained my findings. He does some checking and confirms there was in fact a missing game between Sharks nation and us. The plan Ryan decided on is to just add the missing game to the end of the schedule. I asked him if he’s going to reprint the schedule and he said no, he’s just going to put the extra score card in for tomorrow and tell the scorekeeper about the change. After sorting this out I linked back up with the team and made sure everyone was ready to go.  At this point everyone had enough and it was off to Dana’s to play some corn hole, eat, bitch about today, and discuss our plans for Saturday.

                Saturday comes around and our first game is scheduled for 12pm, everyone arrives around 10 AM and we begin to get ready. When it comes time to fill pods and so forth, I go to use our paint from yesterday and its rock hard, even more so then yesterday. Come to find out Scooter stored the paint in his house, which was about 60 something degrees, so needless to say we had to buy more paint and day 2 Valken paint wasn’t much better than day 1 Valken paint. So after I get the new paint and everybody is at the chrono, I check in with the scorekeeper to make sure the extra game was added. Despite it not being on the schedule the card was there and after a minute or two of explanation we were good to go. The games began a little late, but not super late. The fist game RC played on Saturday was against Sharks 2, RC made it to their primary bunkers and locked the field down from the aggressive play of Sharks 2. The Sharks fell one by one starting from the 50-wedge. The next matchup RC had was against Sharks 2 again.  The play was similar, but this time Pigpen, Scooter and Amish got taken out leaving Ninji and CMcD holding it down.  CMcD was in the carwash and Ninji was in D3 against 3 Sharks.  They managed to get the game to a 2 on 2 then the Sharks snake player started to run down CMcD.  CMcD realized the player was coming, so he jumped up in the middle of the carwash and shot the approaching player.  The player continued to play on shooting CMcD, but the ref did make a decision and said the CMcD had shot their guy first.  While the refs were sorting this out the other Shark player ran down and shot out CMcD.  Now you would have expected a one for one for playing on, but that didn’t happen.  Our next game was against Sharks Nation. RC broke out in the usual style PigPen in the snake, Scooter in God, Ninji and Amish to D2 and Can, and CMcD holding down the center.  Nation made a great move up the D-side and won the game.  The next game was against the Sharks 2 and RC was ready to play, we broke out and dominated Sharks 2 with 5 alive. We’re continued playing, grinding it out and the day is coming to a close. That’s when I realized the other team probably didn’t know about the additional game, so I go over and tell them. Now their captain was on the field at this time and when he came off he was pissed when he heard this. I explained what had happened and his reply was to accuse me of cheating and trying to get an extra game. The scorekeeper tried explaining and to be honest I thought she handled the situation well, even though she and I both felt we were gonna get hit at some point during this debate. The other captain goes and gets his schedule and team info he sees’ we’re right and makes a comment about it not mattering anyways. They already won the event because it’s total points. I said no, when we asked the NPPL we were told the top 2 teams were going on to play for 1^st and 2^nd. He says we’re wrong and when we ask the scorekeeper she has no idea, so they find the head guy running the field and he confirms the pump division is total points no finals. When I ask when the change occurred he said it never had been we must have been misinformed by registration or someone else and that they got pump 5-man mixed up with D4 5-man. I looked at our schedule and there are 3 total games left. We play 2 and Sharks 2 play 1 more. If Sharks 2 wins their last game they win the event and if they lose we have a chance to tie them for 1^st and it comes down to points. However, Sharks 2 last game is against their b-team Sharks Nation and to be nice the Nation wasn’t the strongest team and Sharks 2 beat them easily, so we know the best we can do is 2^nd, so that’s what we do. We won our last two games by dominating the Sharks Nation and we get 2^nd place overall in the pump division. This though does not sit well with the team, as everyone is upset about the finals getting canceled and everything else that has gone wrong with this event. No matter what I say, I can’t change the teams mind or my mind for that matter; we had just been completely screwed over by the NPPL. Now most people would say well you should have won more games and I agree, however, when you know its top 2 going on and you’re in the top 2 you’re not too worried about winning. You’re worried about someone getting hurt, trying new things for the finals and so forth. I’m not saying we’re not trying to win; in fact we went 4 and 2 that day which was the best record of all the teams playing on Saturday in our division. What I’m saying is finding out 3 games before the tournament is over your finals is canceled is bullshit!

                Now before I go into my closing I want to discuss the reffing on field three. Atrocious is the first word that comes to mind, however, I must say they were at least equally bad to all the teams playing and no one got any special treatment. They were slow, arrived late, took more breaks than games played and seemed like they didn’t care if the bunkers were inflated one way or another. They didn’t want to make calls or check players, even when you could see the hits from the sidelines. I watched a player get shot (D4 player) multiply times in the pack as he dove into the snake and the head ref leaned in a little and called him clean. A second later he gets shot in the face and when he stands up his outer pod on his pack has about 2-3 clearly visible hits on it. Another time the head ref was screaming a player across field had been eliminated multiple times and even point at the player and this player continued to play, shoot people, and no penalty was pulled and not one of the other refs on that side went in to pull the player.  Now I can go on, however I’ll leave it at that, and close this paragraph with I heard the reffing on all the fields was pretty bad. How bad I don’t’ know but if it was as bad as what’s listed above I’m amazed there were no fights!

                So after everyone calmed down and packed up, I went over to registration to pick up our trophy and prize.  When I got there they confirmed what I already knew is that we got 2^nd overall.  As I’m waiting I overhear Ed Poorman (Players Liaison) talking about how he hates 5man and doesn’t think it’s worth the bother in the NPPL. Now this is the guy who’s supposed to work with the players and he’s bashing a division and not only that, my division that already feels like 2^nd class citizens at this event. Now I’m getting a little more visibly upset, when Chuck Hendsch walks over to me. He congratulates me and asked how we thought the event went. I asked him if he wanted the truth and he said yes, so I proceeded to tell him how the event went for us and for that moment he seemed to care and he listened to what I had to say. He went into the back to find out why the finals had been canceled because he wasn’t even aware of this and when he emerged he and I both knew there was nothing he could do. He tried to explain but to be honest I didn’t care, he even offered us $350 off a future event, of which I politely turned down because the team wanted nothing to do with the NPPL anymore unless major changes were made and he couldn’t promise this. He asked if we wanted to do the team picture and I told him no, everyone was upset and we just wanted to leave, so he hands me a check for $94.50 and our trophy/medals and we parted ways. As I’m walking back to the truck I realize the check says NPPL PUMP 2^nd Place Chicago.

                 In closing I would like to thank our sponsors for providing us with great gear and support.  Although, we did not get 1^st place RC conducted themselves in a professional manner and played hard despite all the schedule and format changes. I also want to apologize for all the people that read this, I didn’t discuss our playing in great detail which I usually do, but more or less I complained about

RC Win PSP Mid Atlantic Open Pump Division

It’s been a few weeks since MAO. I (Scotty Don’t) have decided to write the MAO update for the blog. After taking a long break from paintball, I decided to start playing again this summer. This was my first PSP Event, as well as my first national event. Friday night CmcD Amish and I rode up to PigPen’s house to meet up with Ninji and Scooter to watch some of the live feed from earlier that day. Chrispy came up after he had gotten off of work at midnight.

We first arrived at Outdoor Xtreme in Chesapeake City, Maryland, OXCC for short, early Saturday to watch some pro games, mainly wanted to catch the Infamous/Heat games early that morning. We then walked around and checked out the vendor  sections, there was a lot of cool new products, such as the virtue spire loader (which I told the virtue rep it looked like a boat, he didn’t seem to take it well), as well as the JT FX 2.0 line(new pants are sick!). Then we went to pick up our PSP IDs, where Amish tried to get an explanation as to why his prior picture wasn’t accepted by them, while lifting up his sunglasses revealing his face. It was difficult for Chrispy, and me to keep a straight face while he did so. We went to the HK/PBFashion tent to pick up a lanyard and a few headbands, as well as a HK epic speedfeed for my revy. MR. H was cool, Amish wanted his headband changed, and MR. H made it happen, so he was repaid with a jar filled with the finest pickles from our sponsor Amish’s Pickle Plantation. After going to the GI tent and testing our paint to figure out what batch we wanted, and gathering everyone up we left to go back to the hotel and unload the gearbags, and luggage. We hung out for a bit, made sure all of our gear was in working order, and ready to roll. We then went to a Ruby Tuesdays, where we had a waitress that was completely dumbfounded that we all played paintball as a sport. I also had to describe the way I wanted my burger to her, I didn’t realize plain means a piece of meat? No, its bottom bun, meat, bacon, cheese, then top bun. After grubbing down on some delicious food, we headed back to OXCC to scope out the field we were going to be playing, which happened to be the dye field. We walked that a bit came up with a game plan. We headed back to the hotel after this, showered and watched some TV, double checked our gear, and went to bed.

We woke up early Sunday to head to the field, all of us ready to play. We got to the field, watched a pro game, walked around a little more, then went to our pits to get geared up and get ready for the games. We got our pit got all set up then went to GI Sportz and pulled paint for the event. We made sure our guns were shooting under 300fps, then waited a bit more for the games to start. The quote from this event seemed to be “Don’t fill up your pods yet”-Chrispy. He said this at least 10 times to everyone. We had the pleasure of sharing the pits with another team called Old and Slow, they were very cool guys, and girl, as most pump players are. We talked to the other teams about coaching, the other teams wanted coaches, so Chrispy scrambled to find one, We ended up going through coaches due to either having games, or heading home. Thanks Jake and Umpa from Richmond Rage, Todd from Liberty, and Bobby from DC Devastation for some excellent coaching on the snake side. We went 10-1 all day, we only lost one game in the prelims, but still got all of our points putting us as number 1 seed. Chrispy went off to talk to the schedule lady, and came back to tell us 3 teams were moving on, when he said that I was ready to pack my bags and leave. I had been swindled out of 1st place like this before. Then he said we are automatically in the finals, and the 2nd and 3rd place teams have to duke it out to move on to the finals. It was between Old and Slow, and Murder Machines for the finals, I helped the Old and Slow guys out a little in the pits as much as I could and still be competitive. Old and Slow ended up rolling Murder Machines in the semi finals, putting them in the finals with us. We switched up our game plan slightly to put myself in a more conservative position for these games. We all got pumped up for the finals, we knew it was finally time for RC to have a 1st place podium finish at a national event. We ran the field in the first game, went in to the pits, podded up, got ready to go out for another game. Wrecked the opposing team in the 2nd game, finished 5 up, and Amish ran the flag in for the Win. The feeling was unreal, over all of the years of playing paintball, never have I felt that great on the field. Amish wanted the flag, so we asked the ultimate if we could keep it, and he let us have it. We then invited Old and Slow’s team over to take some pictures with us, it was a great feeling, never have I seen 1st and 2nd place teams ever take a group picture and be so friendly to each other after any tournament. This is why I love playing pump paintball. We then took RC team pictures in front of the A, huddled up and had a pep talk, and did the RC break.
We then walked around some trying to figure out what was next as far as the podium and getting our trophy and medals. Found out we had like 20 more minutes before we had to be over there, so we took our gear back to the trucks, came back and it was time for us to go up. We went up Chrispy talked, while we all held the GI banner up, then the champagne tops went flying and Amish sprayed whoever was within 10 feet of him in the front row, while PigPen just let it rain down some in front of him then unintentionally started showering it down on me. Amish gave Rab a jar of his fine pickles also. I got my hands on the trophy, and was breaking Chrispy’s balls and telling him it was mine, and then carried it everywhere I went for the rest of the day. I knew Chrispy would be pretty upset if he didn’t get the trophy so I finally gave it to him, where we all know it will be safe. We went to see Mike from RAZA, who hooked us up with some swag for getting the win. We walked around some more, watched some pro games, and then decided to start our journey home.

Big shout out to GI Sportz for the great paint, and letting us participate in the Imperial program, St!ffi for the amazing barrels, EXALT, CCM, Amish’s Pickles, PEVS Paintball, KPS paintball, Fired Up paintball, RAZA for the bossiest jerseys in paintball, Sandana , and M. Carter Brown as well as anybody else who has helped and supported us throughout the years.

Check out the champagne podium finish: