Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Major League Paintball Held Hostage: Weekly Update

Just a few odds and ends this week, kids.
Over in PSPland early registration is already at 129 teams and the first payment deadline is still more than a month away. That looks pretty good but if WC drops off as much as Chicago did (approximately) the total needs to be around 275 - 290 total teams. (I'm projecting a decline from last year based on the economic situation and turnout so far on the season. World Cup is however both the season ender and a unique event so who knows, it may show more resilience than expected.)
I wonder how many semi-pro teams the PSP could accommodate in a pinch? No reason, just curious.
Also, a bleg repeat--if you've played a divisional xball event this year or reffed one how refs per field this season? Anybody?

Registration officially closes for the USPL's West Coast Open tomorrow but if you suddenly decided you needed to play I expect Camille could make it happen. It's Old Skool (SC Village), it's New Skool (no, not Nicky Cuba, fresh, flat turf surface). What could be better? Some mid-summer paintball at a venue with legit paintball history.

The MS is doing its usual dumb and mum routine after the ban of Notorious announcement last week and I suspect they are simply hoping that and the D1 ref points problem will simply blow over as the Euro teams are too disorganized or spineless to insist the league operate like it believes in its own sporting pretensions and rules.
Otherwise there's a bit of a breather before the next event which is London despite the fact most of the current talk is about the late announcement of a Turkish venue season finale. London is scheduled for late September with the Turkey event following in late October. So far 4 non-locked teams have registered for London. Even though most of the recent issues in the MS relate primarily to the locked divisions it will be interesting to see if there continues to be weakness in D2 and M% registrations. Paris registrations suggest it may be trending that way but the event's Open status means we really need to see London before drawing a conclusions. Still ...

Fun, fun, fun over on The Grand Tour with the Graz beach party! Seems as a late attempt to entice a few more teams in The Grand Tour will have a lakeside party with DJs after tournament play has concluded Saturday. (That would be this Saturday as the event will be held this weekend.) In a curious turnaround registration numbers are down over last week from 46 to 40 (which may have inspired the beach party but it's probably too late for that to matter much.) I would love to know what the DJs are gonna be spinning and I'm guessing whatever it will be it would make my ears bleed. (What can I say? I have sensitive ears.)

2 comments:

Joe R said...

Re: Semi-Pro team accomodations

My rough, non-Raehl math shows that the Pro field, for prelims, can accommodate 24 teams between pro and semi-pro. Assuming the pro team division stays locked at 13 for WC (and I see no reason it wouldn't stay at 13), that would leave room for 11 semi-pro teams, and an 8AM-6PM schedule wednesday through saturday.

Baca Loco said...

Thanks, Joe. You are an official VFTD non-slacker. Congrats!

However I do not believe the Pro division is locked or ever has been this season but it's good to know what the combined max will likely be. (There is a rumor Joy would like to play and they were, at one time time in the not-too-distant-past, invited to play PSP Pro.)