The Sport Of Kings That Made Me "Me"

I recall sitting in a middle school classroom when our teacher told us to perform a show-and-tell of something. Remember those odd experiences in middle school or elementary school? I always thought they were mundane, as nobody ever had anything as cool as I did.

In retrospect, I think they were all trying to get us to learn public speaking skills which, suffice to say, are necessary in life. I do thank all teachers out there who perform this task.

As repetitive as it may seem, it did teach us how to stand in front of a room of students and speak about something useful (or not).

However, on this daunting day, one of the students presented something that would change my life forever: a tiny thing called a "paintball." Now, this was 2001.

At this point, it was actually okay for a student to walk into a middle school classroom and present (you guessed it!) an actual paintball gun. Of course, the tank was turned off, but this was the first (and surely not the last) time any student would walk into a classroom with a gun (excuse me, a paintball gun is actually termed: "paintball marker," but that is beside the point). This round, encapsulated ball filled with paint would soon change my life.

The Paintball Day

When I saw this, I was intrigued.

So, after meandering around the idea of a game of hunting people with guns (and as a fond enthusiast of war-like video games), I asked my father to buy me one.

His actions that day would begin the bombarding of a new craze I soon fell in love with.

He bought me a Tippmann paintball gun, which is most likely the first "marker" you picked up when you decided to go out on a work trip or to take your kids to a paintball field. It is black, long, and has a short barrel. In due notion, it is the dunce of paintball guns.

The First Day

I recall being taken to the paintball field. Now, back around this time, it was a craze. Everybody who was anybody owned a paintball gun, and they all congregated around the ever-pleasant paintball field. I recall that first game like it occurred yesterday: there I was, surrounded by pipes acting as sources of cover, and playing my first game of "hunt."

"Do what you do best, Jonathon: hunt..." (Winston, John Wick III)

My first game was great, suffice to say. It was a two-on-two match, meaning two players against two (duh!). My teammate was an experienced player, and he told me: "When I say 'move,' crouch and run to the next cover source." When he would say "move," we would simultaneously coordinate up the field. This was the beginning of my ventures as a man.

Now, there is a problem with the Tippmann 98. When you shoot out of an 8-inch barrel, the 300-feet-per-second paintballs tend to droop downward. I noticed this deviant pattern, and so I began to shoot above the cover source. Sure enough, the paintball dropped off and lowered closer to the ground, thus hitting the opposing player on the top of the head.

Then, I graduated to much more omnipotent markers over time.

Mid-Sentence, Please...

I want to make note now that before you continue reading, this is nothing special about an article on LinkedIn. I am simply discussing my favorite sport of past times, and I wanted to share this with you, as well as to remind myself that I was taught teamwork, communication and leadership with a simple sport surrounded by controversy.

If you'd prefer a more business-oriented article, click here to access my documentations in the 90 Day Content Challenge, where I have what will soon be 90 articles of varying disciplines. For once, I decided to write an article for myself, not for anyone else.

This is my tale of my teenage years, and how they changed my life forever...

Falling In Love...

I fell in love with the sport.

And it would soon become very clear that this was more than just a game I was great at.

It took a lot of time and effort to master the paintball mentality, but I still find myself to this day watching videos my father recorded of me playing at paintball tournaments, never once losing a "one-on-one" game, and always striving to be the best I could. It actually consumed my life, and it was the healthiest addiction I have ever had

The Fall Of My Sport

Now, when many hear the term: "paintball," they think: "that thing where you run around and shoot people?" Nope, it's not that. Rather, it is a sport of kings, and though it has been siphoned of its value, it taught me some wonderful life lessons, as well as business skills.

Paintball is now down to a 1.2 billion dollars as an industry, which was a lot more than that when I first began. Meandering on about this will not get us anywhere useful, so I want to jump ahead to the bulk of the discussion: what I learned.

More so, what you can do with something as simple as a ball of paint...

Teamwork Became Useful

Not a sporty person, and always the last person picked at a soccer tournament, I found that teamwork soon became very useful in the variance of life.

Paintball taught me that you can coordinate with other players on the field. This is a skill we all need in business. When, say, your front player (the player at the 50-yard-line, so-to-speak) is pinned down, you need to cover the left and right sides of the opposing player.

This locks them into what is called a "bunkering," where you quite facetiously rush around the cover source and shoot point-blank. Because paintballs drop after around 30-40 feet (they are capsules, not bullets, after all), the bunker move is the best way to go.

Communication Was Essential

In paintball, the one thing more powerful than the paintball marker is the ability to communicate, just like we see in business.

When you communicate, you can coordinate strategies. I like to think that paintball is a board room of men and women all working toward the same goal.

They want to win (or in business, to simply see their profit margins increase). Thus, communication among a team is crucial.

Example: I used to go to a lot of paintball tournaments, and my team always made it to, at the very least, the semi-finals. We would typically run out of fuel after a good six hours of back-to-back games, and this led us to exhaustion. Thus, we were happy just playing.

Just like in life, paintball is an act of communication and sheer dedication. The more powerful the marker, the more paintballs you can spew at enemy players. However, if you cannot get your team on the right side (much like in business), or motivate them to achieve a given task, you fail. That is the essence of life: communication is essential to our nature as a human species, and just like in paintball, is was always essential to do just that.

The War Game

Another facet paintball taught me was that war is not what we think it is.

Sure, paintball can seem like a violent sport, and you may have even gone to a local field where you played with your family, friends or even your youngsters, and would oversee the tournament-like players (i.e. what I did, which was relatively high in testosterone and adrenaline) screaming in aggressive mannerisms like cavemen on the prowl.

But it has merit, and that is why I am writing this.

You see, paintball was always seen as a "war game." It was always within notion that this sport caused violence, but did it? Paintball disappeared almost ten-to-fifteen years ago, and yet we are seeing much worse among society in the days of its absence.

When we think of paintball, we think: "shooting people."

But That Was Never The Case

I always saw something many did not about this sport: it was something that actually calmed me down. If it had not been for my ventures in this variated sport, or game, or whatever you wish to call it, I would probably have not turned out the way I am today.

Paintball taught me business, the need for teamwork, and the ever-omnipresent desire to lead. Never once in my life have I ever felt so alive as I did back then, and it taught me to value my teammates, to lead by example, and to motivate others around me.

The Negative Predisposition

Where this sport went, I have no clue. However, I can guess: people began to see it for something it never was. There were thousands of players at one point, and now the industry has fallen to a closure of epic proportions. I have yet to see a true tournament paintball game in years, despite its vacancy in formal organizations such as the NPPL.

I had competed in those tournaments numerous times. These were multi-billion-dollar establishments, and where did they go? Well, they disappeared with either a) the recession of 2008, or b) with the advent of parental figures afraid that their children would become violent. There is a lesson to be learned here, I promise, and it is simple:

We all need to be a little bit open-minded about people's lives.

The Morale Of This Story

It is a simple one: respect other people's beliefs about war, about fun, and about the human spirit. We are a dynamic species, if we so choose to be.

When paintball disappeared, airsoft arose. Airsoft became rather violent, thus putting paintball into a much more negative light. Thus, now video games rule the troposphere of "sports" oriented around war, and suffice to say, we have seen the repercussions of this.

School shootings and violence, as an example, were drastically lower when paintball existed. Learn to respect other people's wishes, and do yourself a favor: go Google your town name plus "paintball fields near me," and find one.

Go with your friends, your family, or try to just go alone and enjoy the nature of fun.

Paintball was always just that: fun, and in the end, I would not have turned out as the person I am now if it had not been for my father, who bought me that first Tippmann 98, took me to my first game, and supported me the entire way. Even my extended family became involved, and I feel this sport needs to return...

Thank you for humoring me today, I promise I will post something better tomorrow.

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