Baca's Mailbag, Dec 12

The question(s) that follow are very common. I have heard them repeated for as long as I've been involved in this game and there was a time when I asked most of them. I don't have definitive answers. The best I can do is some observations based on too many years experience. I invite the rest of you slackers to include your take on these questions in the comments.

(A) Ok, What type of back round do most of the pro players or regular tourney player have ??? (B) How do you afford it? is a question I am asked many times over the couse of a season? (C) I see a lot of the newer players having a tough time, when they look at the commitment needed to play on a regular basis. Our team is made up of a mix of people, ages and incomes and we are in a rual area.. (D) We have to buget and save to do what we do. We have no team sponsors and by no means do I think we have money to throw around.. We didnt go to a couple of major event due to the cost of traveling (air fare) How how do most players afford to play ...? (E) Do sponsors make up some of the difference, has it really become a rich man's sport? (F) What your feeling on the paintball landscape and the cost of playing competitive ball?


I'm going to respond to the questions in the order they come up and in order to keep things as clear as possible I've divided the query into sections.
(A)--from an economic perspective there is no type. I joke occasionally about the lack of diverse sports interest and background among tourney players but I doubt it's much different from the generalized norm. I just find it a bit curious since most competitive people are competitive about almost everything, and as kids, tend to try more things--or did a hundred years ago when I was a kid.
(B)--the usual way most players do. By prioritizing their spending in such a way that they can keep playing paintball. Figure out what you can afford and then spend more--is the way it frequently ends up. I'm not even sure it's all that much different, cost-wise, than it used to be. (But I do think there are a couple of contributing factors that are different today than in the past.) Back in the day we shot less paint but it cost a lot more. The last IAO I played Hellfire was $105 bucks a case of 2000 (including tax.) High end guns weren't much cheaper and national events were a larger time commitment, more days off school or work. A serious tourney jones has never been cheap. The biggest difference today is practice costs.
(C)--Nothing new here either although I do think it's tougher to get started in tourney paintball than it once was. My first team had players with money but no time and players with time but no money. Some were super gung ho, others a lot less so. Our biggest issue was getting enough time & money & commitment together for actual events. We were a decent practice team and a lousy competition team.
(D)--Again, not uncommon. So does most everybody else involved in the tourney side of the game. What often happens is one or two guys end up taking on extra financial burdens (to be paid back later) which almost inevitably turn into (more) problems later. Two things are required of a serious team; strong leadership and a plan. And once the plan is agreed to everyone needs to hold up their end--or they get replaced. More problems arise here in that lots of times the team is a mix of friends and ages and resources and that has always been and remains a recipe for frustration more often than not. Nobody wants to be the bad guy, everybody understands the difficulties but if the team is actually going to function there has to be a bottom line commitment from everyone actively involved. The big difference is today the level of commitment is higher lower down the divisional ladder than it once was, or so it seems to me. 
(E)--Sponsors make up some of the difference for very few teams any more. And the lion's share of what remains of real sponsorship, not discount product deals, is product. For example, Team A gets X number of guns from sponsor Q. The guns are for the team with the understanding the extra guns are sold to help fund the team. There are a relative handful of teams that do better than that.
(F)--In many respects very little has changed. Serious competition isn't cheap, it requires some level of commitment. A commitment in time & money. It is what it is. Beyond that I have one serious concern and I think there are a couple of factors in play today that are significantly different from times past.
My fear is decisions about the game's future direction will be based too much on the current rough economic times. Somewhere there's a boundary between keeping the sport alive and killing it in an effort to get more peeps to play.
Having said all that I also think there are things that make it more difficult to compete than in times past: fewer fields dedicated to supporting local team(s); a broadly younger demographic; what practice has become. The first one seems pretty straighforward. Toss into the mix the larger number of younger players and you've got kids without direction and fewer leaders. Fewer leaders and fewer homes that welcome competitive players and teams makes it more difficult to build teams. And somewhere during the last decade the romance of the grind has token hold of all divisions of competition. Which isn't a bad thing but it has upped the ante to competing in virtually every division of play. Kick in scrimming on the event layout and the game--for too many--becomes about reps, practice points played and nearly endless cases of paint shot--and we're talking about so-called introductory levels of play. The entry bar has been raised too high and it's going to be nigh on impossible to lower it. 

Baca's Mailbag: Lessons from Galveston?

Don wants to know--at least he wanted to know last week--if the Galveston pro game videos might be useful as film study for either the pro teams or divisional teams. (At the time he asked I hadn't watched any of the videos. I have now seen a fairly large representative sample.) The answer is an equivocating maybe. More definitively, and equally disappointing, there really isn't enough of the right kind of material to serve as useful film study.

But before I get into the details I have a request: Hey, Matty, how 'bout mixing up your booth partners in order to get reps from all the teams involved? There's nothing wrong with Matty & His All-Star Friends but maybe a little love for the rest of us? (Assuming the league is going to continue with the event videos.) I know, it's out there ... but it might work. Just saying.

The matches, or as I prefer to call them, the kinetic motive activities too often focused on elements of the action, even on the breakouts where a single team was featured or the split screen and camera angles couldn't keep all ten players in sight. The elevated camera view that encompassed most of the field was the most useful angle for film study. With film study I'm focusing on one of two s. Either I'm confirming my guys were attempting the play called and analyzing their execution and following thru to success or failure or I'm observing an opponent for patterns that may occur over the length of a match or things like tendencies exhibited by specific players. The patterns reflect either intentional or unintentional actions or routines that may be predicted beyond the patterns that are a nearly universal element of playing the format. For example, you don't need film study to know that if an opponent loses a corner player they are likely to try and re-fill the spot quickly. But film study (or live study for that matter) can tell you that #34 always goes to a particular prop OTB or that Team X shows a strong tendency to fill a particular prop on the delay or as a secondary move. Unfortunately, the way the match videos are edited they don't provide enough consistent info to make those sorts of determinations.

What the Galveston videos may provide is some how-to (or even some how-not-to) info for developing players on playing specific positions on the field. There is quite a lot of snake play in the videos as well as lots of shots of individuals playing particular props that might be useful to some players.

For any teams interested in film study let me suggest you focus the majority of your efforts on filming and analyzing your own team first. Knowledge of an opponent may provide useful information but the advantages gained are seldom the difference between winning and losing--though they can be. Breaking your own team down will deliver larger rewards, faster. The first priority is a team's ability to go out and execute their game plan. And while it's nearly impossible in practice to keep track of every detail and every player the capability of going back and reviewing film over and over can reveal weaknesses and mistakes that are easily missed otherwise but just as easily addressed when you become aware of them.

Euroland Seminar Concept

Aight, this one's mostly for the Eurokids and I could use your help. No, you don't have to do anything--much. What I'm looking for is feedback, info and opinions.
I'm looking into the possibility of organizing a seminar (or two) for experienced teams and players designed around teaching the European player secrets of the aggressive American style of play. Most clinics focus on making the individual a better player. (Which is a good and necessary thing.) The purpose of these seminars would be to help equip team captains, coaches and whole teams with the knowledge and means to optimize their training, learn how to function more effectively as a team while at the same time learning the practical drills and procedures that will give teams the confidence and know-how to play the aggressive game.
Nothing is set at this point though I have a few ideas. I'm looking at the last couple of weeks of August in terms of a time frame. And I'm thinking 2 seminars back-to-back. The first might be a Monday thru Thursday and focus on bringing in teams (or at least a representative sample) who would also receive the benefit of actively participating in the team building and training activities. The second seminar might then be Fri - Sunday aimed more for team captains, coaches and trainers as the level and amount of actual on field training activities would likely be reduced. Alternatively it could be back-to-back weekends instead. The first weekend a Fri thru Sunday for mostly individual team leaders and the following weekend Thursday thru Sun targeting more team participation.
That's the rough concept, a possible time frame and the target participants. No prices yet but one possible venue would eastern France, proximate to Germany, which would be reasonably accessible to large number of Euro teams. The team seminar would have to limit participation while the team leaders seminar would be more flexible.
Any and all comments, particularly from Euro players, is greatly appreciated.

Are Your Team Priorities In Order?

It would be nice to think no one reading this needs to worry about this post but I know it isn't true. (And you will too. Even if it doesn't apply to you you will immediately recognize other teams with this problem.) Most of the time everyone involved in a struggling team knows something isn't working but they can't figure out what it is. For the lucky ones it's as simple as having their priorities out of whack. And as we's still in the preseason there's time for those folks to get their house in order.

Before things get too serious I want to tell y'all a story. Back when I was wet behind the ears I was playing 10-man tourney ball in the woods. From an individual skills point of view our team had solid players. We worked hard on our field-walking, both analyzing the fields and deciding how to attack whichever end of the field we started on (as even the best woods fields were often horribly unbalanced) and we would walk through our breakouts (an aggressive run would frequently go further than the length of any modern field) know our primaries, the likely paths of our opponents, our shooting lanes and on and on. But when the games were played we often got stuck in the mid-game and couldn't close games out. In hindsight it's easy to see that our plan(s) held us back because we focused all our efforts on fulfilling the plan but the plan wasn't the goal. The goal was to win.

In the modern game that particular problem still occurs but there are lots of others that can also get in the way of success--and just about all of them are important ingredients in building a successful, winning team. For example, one of the first lessons taught is staying alive. But what happens if too much emphasis is placed on staying alive? It's easy for players to become extremely defensive as they focus too much of their effort and attention on staying alive. It becomes a hindrance to successful competition--even though it is an necessary skill. And it can be enormously frustrating sometimes to try and figure out what's wrong because everything being taught and demanded is correct.

Perhaps the most common failure is to call yourselves a team but act like a bunch of individuals. It is particularly difficult to overcome because so much of the development involved in building a team is at the player level. (This topic probably merits its own post.) The foundation of a team begins with accountability and shared responsibility. As a practical example, let's say Joe can't make snake off the break and Bob keeps getting bunkered out of the Dorito 50. To make it Joe's and Bob's fault is contrary to effective team building. If Bob keeps getting bunkered where is Bob's support? If no one is responsible for protecting Bob it's not his fault, particularly if his job is to work the cross field angles working for eliminations. And if Joe is struggling to make the snake what can the team do to make him more effective? To expect Joe to act independently of his teammates is not how a team functions.

The balancing act required is accomplished by having your priorities in order. Here's a simple order that might help put things into their proper perspective. Technique--Skills--Players--Team--Tactics--Winning. Now I do not mean to suggest that plans or plays are more important than your players--only that the tactics employed function best on a team level. Nor do I intend to suggest winning is more important than personal relationships for example--only that the first priority of successful competitive paintball is to win and that is the page everyone involved in the team ought to understand and be on. Teach technique to improve skills to make better players who function as a unit for the shared goal of winning paintball. When any aspect of the process is out of order or under or over valued it reduces the prospects for success.