Campaign Cup '09 OTB

Assume the usual disclaimer and also assume that any lane suggested may, if appropriate, be more accurately observed as a zone and shouldn't be viewed as limited to the simple line used to demonstrate approximate location.

A--lanes represent a snake side home shooter and offer three distinct options though the widest, A, is most easily accomplished tight up on the home bunker. A1 is the most utilitarian of the options and should be considered the primary snake side lane. Any set of clearly defined lanes however offer the possibility of a shooter putting up two clean lanes of fire. (DO NOT try two lane shooting unless you are already a very good laner to begin with. Even then it must be practiced and evaluated honestly. I only mention it because it is possible to shoot two lanes to effect but it is a rare skill I do not often recommend. More on this with the B lanes.)

B--D-side home shooter also has 3 clearly defined lanes available and the spacing of those lanes is far more conducive to two lane shooting otb. Here's how it works (if you were to try it.) On the horn sweep the gun up into lane B just long enough to see a handful of paintballs on your lane--at about this time the first runner will be moving thru that lane or just past it--at which time you sweep your gun into the next lane. You will often choose this next lane by the position of the first runner; deep or tight. Deep is a likely corner runner while closer to the bunkers suggests a more upfield primary. The obstacles in two lane shooting is you have to put up two effective lanes of paint in very short order. Too little time committed to the first one and it's pointless but too much time committed means no chance of getting multiple balls through the wide lane in advance of the runner. If you can do it it will be particularly useful on the D-side of this field.

All the remaining positions expose the shooter to some additional risk except G. And all the remaining positions can be accomplished running & gunning. That stated, each position can, on average, be more effectively shot as a hesitation or dead zone lane.

C--is "hiding" from a home shooter and actual position will depend on physical placement of the actual bunkers as the degree of cover is minimal. The wide lane offers only marginal help in controlling the snake as it will only be available in the seconds immediately preceding the breakout. The inner lane, C1, offers some unique options however. It may be used as a change-up from a wide runner or as a trailing gun or even off the delay. The object is lane paint into the pin zone and then hesitate using your pin to block the opponent's home. You can now edge home off his lane (A1). Keep in mind an uncontested corner runner will be able to quickly wrap.

D--like C there is some risk from the home shooter if you aren't careful. The virtue of D is that it offers an excellent crossfield shot along with an equally excellent lane inside the the D-side doritos that can be used after showing the opposition a wide runner stance prior to the breakout.

E--is a variant on D that assumes the opponent will stop at the can (or MT) shooting wide. The object here is to be able to turn in on the opponent's edge and catch the player off guard.

F--is either an R&G or a delay as it is otherwise too exposed. As a delay (assuming a corner opponent) it offers the option of edging the home shooter using the MT. The only alternative is if a player were R&G'ing the corner but held up due to an obvious wide lane being shot from home. In this case the player must first lane the outer edges of the can and MT and then quickly try and edge home of the lane or reverse direction.

G--offers a terrific crossfield lane on a snake runner but also offers a reasonably solid position from which to contain snake movement and activity given that the pin placement allows the player some freedom of movement.

As always if there is a specific question about any of this don't hesitate to post it up in comments. Otherwise I'll be following this post up with another on the Campaign layout discussing tactical options and the field imbalances you might be able to take advantage of.

Sorry Kids

Came home from WCO to a major computer meltdown on Monday and I'm just digging out from under today and should be up to speed by tomorrow. (And, yes, it's taken me this long to save my data and fix the damn thing but when it crashed on Monday I couldn't even access any start-up mode to begin to figure out what happened. That, and I'm mostly computer illiterate.) Hopefully I'll have the Campaign OTB posted tonight some time followed by a more in-depth field analysis tomorrow or Friday.

Major League Paintball Held Hostage: Weekly Update

Today we begin with the USPL. First and foremost congrats to Arsenal for another solid victory. There seems little doubt they are the world's best 7-man team at the moment. Next up is home turf for the Arsenalisti with the DC Challenge coming the end of August. Registrations are running about the same as before, 86 teams, with paid totalling (including the pros) 22 teams. Now is the time for those registrations to begin shifting into the paid column as there is approx. a 3 week window left before registration closes.
According to the website last week there was supposed to be an announcement last Saturday at the WCO--which apparently, didn't happen. I'm guessing it was about the fourth event which is rumored to be headed for Vegas though there have been concerns about date availability and proximity to World Cup.
And finally a quick word about the vendors at WCO--there were a lot more there than the team numbers justified, even if they were all Cali-based (and I think they were) and I hope they did a decent business and might have gotten a spike from some of the rec players, if they knew the vendors were there.

The Grand Tour's next event stop is slated to be Moscow the weekend of August 8,9. Pro will be an Open division in Moscow with cash prizes for the top three finishers. While the other Grand Tour events have seen a consistent group of 9 teams competing in the pro bracket Moscow is presently at 0 registrants for the Open bracket. And total registration is a meager 11 teams. Is this what would have happened to the MS in Paris without locked divisions and compulsory play?

The MS Campaign Cup is coming to Engerland in September. (I'll have an OTB edition of the field layout up sometime this week.) Nobody seems to be in a hurry to register--at least among those who have that choice--as D2 only has 1 team listed while M5 has 5 teams listed. Home grown team registrations have been weak-ish in recent years for Campaign. It will be interesting to see if that continues or if there is a bit of a turnaround this time. Rumors about an unofficial boycott of Turkey are making the rounds but I doubt there's any traction there.

In the PSP registration for WC stands at 198 (from around noon EST) with the first payment deadline still weeks away. While an impressive number I'm wondering if that is a soft 198. There will be teams that jump on last minute--as there always are--but for an event that has frequently topped the 300 team mark in recent years I'm a little concerned. If registration reaches 250 prior to the first deadline the final total will probably fall within the projected range. On a related subject there is also some speculation that Paintball Extravaganza in September is gonna pull away some percentage of the vendors who would normally go to World Cup. Nobody seems to know for sure but the grapevine hints that for those who would be in an either one or the other but not both situation that Extravaganza may have the edge.

It's a waiting game now.

The Monday Poll

Okay, picking up on last week's poll I'm interested in what y'all think qualifies as "pro" when we's talking about paintball teams. Let me repeat that--paintball teams, not individual players. The list of options once again includes the scandalously non-specific "other" and once again if you could include in the comments what "other" you had in mind that would be most excellent. Back in the day a pro team could build a reputation mostly thumping non-pros in mixed division prelims. These days pro teams only play pro teams and somebody's got to lose. If a team loses more than they win does that mean they aren't really a pro team or just not as competitive as some of the other pro teams? I'm looking forward to this one so get to voting.

Monday Poll in Review
Last week VFTD wanted to know how many pro teams you expect to be around at the beginning of next season. 66% of the votes were in the range of 12 - 16 teams. 22% thought there would be 10 or fewer teams while 11% voted for 18 or more teams to start next season. To put those numbers into some perspective there were 23 pro teams at the start of the '09 season. With the hiatus of Miami Rage there are currently 22 pro teams with 7 teams (including XSV) competing in both major leagues.

It's Official

I'm a hypocrite. For years I've been saying venues don't matter, competitive paintball matters. And I still believe that but--but-- SC Village may be a famous paintball site. (It is.) It may have hosted historic events (it has) but seriously, the place is a godforsaken dump in the middle of freaking nowhere. It's piles of dirt on top of more dirt and the parking lot may have been an open pit mine at one time.

Like it or not the venue matters in a couple of ways. There aren't too many 4 star restaurants at truck stops. And I'm now unsure whether or not there can really be a major league event at a place like SC Village--which is otherwise a perfectly acceptable rec field--except, again, for being out in the middle of freaking nowhere. Did I mention it was out in the middle of freaking nowhere?

Granted I'm used to lots of green grass and big leafy trees but that really isn't the problem. Back when NPPL v.2 was touring NFL parking lots I didn't think that was a good idea either. So obviously I'm just impossible to please. The thing with the stadiums was they were supposed to attract spectators and supply competitive paintball with some cache. (There should be an accent over the e but I don't know how to do that in Blogger.) What it did was cost too much and distract from more important concerns--at least from my point of view. It wasn't that they were bad venues--sometimes they were very cool venues--but if the venue was a higher priority than say, the officiating, that's a problem.

So maybe the thing about a venue is that it does have a place in the overall scheme of things competitive paintball related. And maybe after every place paintball has been in the last decade an SC Village simply doesn't cut it anymore. Or maybe it does and I'm just being difficult. At the same time from what I've seen of the location for the DC Challenge it looks pretty damn good.
What's the answer? I'm not sure. Maybe this ought'a be the next Monday Poll. If venue matters, how much? Does a major league event have to have a major league venue? And just what qualifies as a major league venue?
Is the PSP's MAO a major league venue? Or the Phoenix Open on the soccer fields outside the Arizona Cardinals' stadium?

FYI

Posting for the rest of the week and thru the weekend will be whatever, whenever. I'm off to the West Coast Open tomorrow. I'll do what I can but it probably would be a good idea if you lowered your expectations.

Measuring Up

In 'A Measuring Stick' I left off at standards. In order for standards to exist, in a meaningful sense, they need to be clearly defined and consistently maintained. In the context of competitive paintball the next question is; how?

Traditionally teams self-selected and it seldom created gaping disparities because serious teams wanted to move up and the occasional teams frequently fell comfortably into the middle of their regular division. Teams determined their fitness to move up by having some degree of consistent success and with little reward at stake teams played for pride and recognition. (Which could eventually lead to the real reward; sponsorship.) [That state was not universal but it was sufficiently the norm that things worked fine for years.]
(Btw, my context is national series events, not local, where so-called sandbagging is a major bugaboo. And a red herring. And ultimately was caused by the general response to the national series largely unintentional rape & pillage of local / regional tourney scenes. But that's a different topic.)

Between then and the introduction of the UCP concept more divisions were introduced, larger prize packages were assigned to those divisions and new rules were implemented to "fix" the problems created by–you guessed it–the new divisions, the prizes and some of those rules.
Conceptually, the UCP is a very good idea in that it seeks to integrate every level of play from the local to the national under a consistent and progressive standard. In practice there are two significant issues; the progression from local to national that looks so good on paper retains, in the overlapping of divisions, the same tensions that had the locals in competition with the national for teams and the current UCP classification rules do not measure up. For the moment it's the classification rules that are important. The league has decided it has an interest in trying to engineer the content of divisions beyond the boundary of competition. (One of the consequences of that has been to drive players up the ranks artificially with the result it has driven some number out of the game, probably prematurely.) The other consequences are the current fuzzy dividing lines between divisions and a programmatic dumbing down of the competition itself across multiple divisions that will, at some point, affect all the levels of competition. In moving too many players (teams) up the rules undermine the core of each division, particularly the lower divisions, so that new teams moving up are competing against a fluctuating standard year by year. And just like teams and players improve by playing better players and teams in practice divisions should provide a consistent standard of play. When they don't the new D3 teams, for example, are competing against a standard that the year before was maybe a top 20 team. Do that year after year and you are doing the opposite of encouraging excellence, you're assuring mediocrity is seen as improvement. And then you move it up the ranks when you pack D2 teams into a floundering D1 division year after year. Does anybody really think the end result is superior play?

Adding further contradictions is a league policy that ignores the idea of merit in that any team at any time is allowed to enter any division they want--with the possible exception of the Pro division. Along similar lines is the pricing policy of entry fees in some circumstances. (Mentioned in this week's MLP Held Hostage Weekly Update.) Is the idea to push teams to favor one bracket over another or participation on one day over another? Or both? Or does D3 pay more simply because the expectation is there's more D3 teams than anything else? Regardless it demonstrates that there is more going on than simply organizing an event, series or system to promote excellence in competitive paintball.

So what to do about it?

Find out next time as short attention span blogging presents; 'Measure of the Game.' (Seeing a pattern yet?)

Major League Paintball Held Hostage: Weekly Update

In order to spice things up a bit here's a link to the Erin Andrew's peephole video. What, it's not working? What do you mean there is no link? Wow! Those Google guys are fast.

Okay, how 'bout we do things in reverse order instead? That should be pretty exciting, right?

The Grand Tour held their Graz Austria event last weekend and were rewarded with a torrential downpour on Saturday for their trouble. The rains left standing water inches deep everywhere. The organizers are claiming victory over the weather--unlike the MS in Malaga--but no scores are posted so I don't know if they managed to complete the event or not. I was told the organizers responded quickly and made alternative arrangements and seemingly did everything they possibly could. But forget the tournament, did the rains wash out the beach party?
I'm reminded of the typical German tourist in Florida. You can spot one a mile away. Close-cropped haircut, sunburned ears, expensive jewelry including big watches worn to the beach, skin tight T-shirts, short shorts (by American standards) and dress socks with sandals. Not that I'm passing judgment. It's just amusing.

Things are quiet in Millennium land as there is no event until the end of September and there is very nearly no registrations yet in the unlocked divisions. There is a team-based effort underway to push the MS to find a fair alternative to their having given reffing points to D1 teams for an open event that nobody else in the division could "score" series points in. Good luck to them but I'm not holding my breath. The largest reason the MS can operate so cavalierly at times is because there is a history of teams and players refusing to stand up for themselves.

The USPL's West Coast Open will be held this weekend. This is the league's second event of the season. The numbers and turnout have to be considered disappointing after such a long lead-in period and a Cali venue but depending on the number of vendors present and the deal the league made with SC Village it is conceivable they may come out of it a modest net plus. That is the happiest face I can put on it using speculative numbers. It also appears, looking at registrations, that the "success" of the WCO is holding the DC Challenge hostage as well. there are a decent number of teams signed up but few have paid and it looks like everyone is waiting to see what happens.

The PSP is gearing up for World Cup and making a big effort to make the transition from Disney to Fantasy of Flight as seamless and easy as possible for the few (if our VFTD poll was representative) who were put out by the change. So far there are 177 teams registered with nearly a month to go before the first entry fee deadline.
Fields that rely on tourney players practice are already anxious to see the WC layout released as most of the teams won't come out until they have the field available to them.
In checking the registrations earlier I noticed the entry fee disparity between pro and semi-pro. (How I missed it before I don't know. Maybe it's the new bifocals.) There's a fat G's difference between the two divisions which seems to me pretty substantial considering semi-pro gets the same number of games and also plays Race2-7 on the same fields with the same refs (except Wednesday in Chicago) and also gets some webcast love. The obvious answer to this will be the prize packages. However the pro package continues to shrink and as a percentage of entries it isn't even close with S-P getting back over 50%. Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating some equivalent formula. What I am suggesting is falling back on the prize package is just an excuse and not a very good one. You see, in the past the league always justified the entry fees the pros paid on all the added expenses of running a special field with more refs and a fancy scoreboard and so on. As if we were demanding all that stuff.
The other thing I found curious was the entry disparity in 5-man (Race2-2). D3 pays more (than the other divisions) no matter which days you play and D4 pays more to play their prelims on Saturday compared to playing them on Friday. At first glance this looks like a move to engineer registrations. I'll be addressing this in another way in tomorrow's follow-up post to 'A Measuring Stick.'

It's A Small World After All

How many times are you people gonna jump at The Next Big Thing only to be disillusioned (again) before you decide to look before you leap? How many times are you gonna hop into the back seat of the nice man's car when he offers you a free ride and a bag of gummi bears? How many times are you gonna park your brain in neutral at the sound of a positive word? (Have you been giving money to televangelists again?)

This is a few final (very final) thoughts on the recent World Games hoopla blazing across Paintball's corner of the internet like a grass fire. But first I'm gonna say something nice(-ish). I think it's swell a German team won and that representative teams from a number of other countries showed up, were invited, whatever. I'm glad they went. Glad they had a good time and shared in the brotherhood of sport blah blah blah. I couldn't care less that there was no U.S. team present. And you can count on me to be front and center cheering paintball on. Just not with my brain turned off.

I'm gonna try and put this World Games business into perspective, give it some context. After that if you want to run around in the street hollering and waving flags be my guest. It won't do any real harm except you'll forget all about it in five minutes until the next time. And maybe that is a problem but it isn't one I'm gonna change with a post.

"At quadrennial intervals, in the years following the Games of the Olympiad" means there is a World Games every four years, not every year or every other year. Next one is 2013.

"The host may also endorse a limited number of additional sports, which are not governed by the IWGA Member Federations, to feature on the Invitational Sports Program." Paintball is not an IWGA member and paintball was not one of the additional sports featured on the Invitational Sports Program. Those were Beach Handball, Dragonboats, Softball, Tchaukball and Wushu. In fact, Paintball was not listed in the program of events. It wasn't listed on the Games' schedule. It wasn't listed among pre-events competitions. But I did eventually find it. Via a separate link for the Sports Activity Park where it was listed along with slow pitch softball, gateball, tai chi chuan, yuan ji dance and sepaktakraw. So, yes, paintball did receive some sort of recognition from the '09 World Games but what that really amounts to is hardly clear.

"Since its founding meeting in Seoul, Korea (in 1981), IWGA membership increased from 12 to 32 International Sports Federations. For an International Federation to become a Member of the IWGA, its recognition by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and/or its membership with the General Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF) are prerequisite." Even if Paintball achieved recognition as a demo sport in '09 further participation requires IWGA membership which requires a) an international sports federation and b) either recognition by the IOC or membership in the GAISF.

Was this a step forward? Maybe, but it wasn't Paintball came, saw and conquered. It wasn't all you have to do is show up. And even if it was a step forward it was a far cry from a World Games Paintball Champiohsip. If it is to amount to anything there's a lot of real work to be done to get from here to there and another round of being ignorantly happy for five minutes while patting ourselves on the back isn't going to get the job done. So sure, be happy, but realize this was a toe in the door, not mission accomplished.

The Monday Poll

This week's poll gives you an opportunity to predict how many pro teams will begin next season. The qualifications are simple: The poll is only addressing teams competing in events in North America--and for those of you who are geographically-challenged that means we's not counting the CPL teams in the MS. That leaves you with two basic calculations to consider; how many leagues will there be next season and how many of the existing pro teams, regardless of league(s), will carry over.

Monday Poll in Review
A sincere VFTD thank you to all you quasi-slackers who took a moment to vote in last week's poll about VFTD. It is appreciated and, even better, the results give me an excuse to limit (or excise) the How-To posts. (The less actual work involved while maintaining the appearance of actual work the better.) Same goes for rehashing the minutiae of the poll results.
But I do have one further request of y'all. If there's anything you'd like more of post it up in comments. (Not that I expect any replies but this way I can tell myself I'm doing everything possible and that y'all really, really like VFTD just the way it is, which is, you know, very gratifying on a personal level. See how I turned your lack of interest and unwillingness to communicate into warm, fuzzy feelings and a net positive?)

It's Those Pesky World Games Again

It seems after falling off the radar over here some invites were sent out to a few countries outside Asia and low and behold some of those teams showed up for what was purportedly an event serving, in part, as a demonstration sport to the World Games in Taiwan recently. (Think of the World Games as the Olympics ugly step-sister.)

The first time around I tried to get excited but the more I looked the less I saw. To this day I can't find anything about paintball or demonstration sports etc. on the official World Games website and without contacts from friends of VFTD around the world I doubt anyone over here would have ever heard about it--until after the fact. All of which makes it hard for me to take any of it overly seriously. Maybe that makes me the Ugly American but even the peeps running the show apparently couldn't be bothered to try and promote it so what else am I supposed to think?

Anyway, last week the kids at pbhub in Germany reported a German team was gonna represent and as it turned out they won. And one of the hub kids (guessing here) --UPDATE: Florian of PBHub and Instinct would like y'all to know he isn't a kid--posted the good news with some photos over at the Nation. He also reported that the Ironmen and Damage were invited to rep the U.S. --UPDATE: that's now been edited--which I imagine somebody told somebody but at least in the case of Damage it isn't correct. Beyond that I remain skeptical but otherwise maybe the World Games is where we belong.

On the plus side, who knows, in four years paintball might be up to speed and a match for the Frisbee which already has an international sanctioning body; the World Flying Disc Federation. The truth is out there.

UPDATE: Here's the link to the original post and comments on this World Games "demonstration sport" gimmick. If you are interested in knowing a little more check it out.

Enlistment for the Week

Almost snuck one past me--and this is a day late. I'd like to say it's still Friday somewhere in the world but I know y'all ain't that gullible. My apologies to VFTD's latest recruit to the DPA, J Christopher Urbanczyk. If I recall correctly JCU joins us from the future capitol of the Caribbean, Miami. (And if I'm mistaken I blame Blogger.) Welcome aboard.

Besides JCU there may have been another recruit who did slip past me. (I have an idea who it might be after looking at the list.) Blogger, for reasons known only deep within the cavernous recesses of Googledom, changed some characteristics of the "follower" gadget so I can no longer tell when a person joined. (As pleased as I am to get new recruits I confess I don't keep track on a daily basis.) If I did miss somebody don't hesitate to take me to task and I will rectify the error immediately, if not sooner.

World domination: Not as easy as it looks

The Premath: West Coast Open

I figured if you could have an aftermath (the result or consequence of an event) why not have a premath (setting the table, as it were, for the coming event and eventual aftermath)? In the premath leading up to the USPL West Coast Open you may recall the kids at ProPaintball dropping the knowledge that Miami Rage was out (at least for this event and perhaps the season) and shortly thereafter that Aftermath would, with Art's blessing, fill the spot. Well, apparently that was one of those not so fast dealios until the owners group decided last night to go ahead as originally scheduled and allow Aftermath to play in the Miami spot without carrying over Miami's seed points. That will put Aftermath in the Saturday prelim section and keep the Pro total at 16 teams. The only remaining related issue is what the team will be called. Seems to me if they want to maintain continuity and call them Miami Rage they should leave the seed points in place because in essence what's happening is a wholesale roster change is being allowed. If they are to be acknowledged as Aftermath removing Miami's seed points is reasonable. Either way I'm not sure it's a huge deal but I'm glad the divisions remain intact.

West Coast Open: OTB Options

The list of OTB optional lanes given is not exhaustive but it should be sufficient to give y'all an idea of the possibilities or perhaps pick up on something overlooked. Oh, and the fact I'm posting this prior to the event doesn't mean I've changed my mind about covering layouts we'll be playing in advance. Consider this an aberration. The lane options are numbered and as always you can click on the image to see a full scale version suitable for printing if you're so inclined.

Also as usual the OTB options listed do not include R&G lanes even though 6, 7 and 8 can be accomplished that way. I categorize them as hesitations in which a runner more or less stops to shoot a lane and then continues on to a designated primary.

1. Is a crossfield lane that may be used to deny the corner, the brick or the snake. Initially it uses the upfield rocket and d-side arm of the U for cover but is susceptible to a wrap of the d-side stubby. Variations of 1 include moving up to the stubby or into the space to the right of the stubby (on the grid) and behind the brick. The angles change incrementally so it's important to keep in mind the priority lane you wish to shoot.

2. Is the d-side version of 1 where the lane focus is on the d-side of the field. It's principle utility is in trying to deny the corner and/or the dorito. It has the same variants as 1 along with the option of completing a rotation out to the d-corner.

3. Is either a containment lane that either attempts to catch a long early run or contain movement into the carwash on the d-wire in the early phases of the game.

4. Is an inside the snake side stubby lane that must be taken immediately (and accurately) upon coming off the board for any real chance of success (although if there are enough players breaking one direction they can either get bunched up sometimes or strung out which increases the chances for an elimination here.)

5. Is both an extension of position 4 and a likely snake control primary position. The lane is outside the snake side stubby so it follows nicely from 4 as it sweeps a lane across the stubby and lets a shooter in position 5 swing the lane to the outside of the corner can and/or the outside edge of the brick as well as the snake.

6. On the diagram is a crossfield option but could just as easily be an inside the snake stubby lane as well though that lane is lost the closer one gets to the upfield 30 rocket. I'm uncertain as to how effective a lane a player running upfield on this line will have but shoot it if you got. (It should be safe unless everybody is doing it in which case teams will make a specific effort to "find" that runner.) Otherwise the way that runner shoots is probably dictated by which way the player plays upon reaching a primary.

7. Is a good delay position and offers more potential snake side lanes than the one diagrammed which is a lane in the gap where the SD and beam overlap. It should make any attempt to take the snake OTB very difficult.

8. More than anything this lane is a counter to 1 & 2 or any situation where shooters are floating and otherwise hard to find with an effective lane.

9. Should really be positioned closer to 8 and is either a R&G lane (zone) or a delay. As a delay its effectiveness is a question of getting into position quickly enough. Ideally the shooter is positioned more or less along the grid line that passes through the stubby. If the player's primary is the stubby it's a natural for moving up into position while shooting a wide lane or it can be used as diagrammed, a delay into the corner.

A Measuring Stick

I spent some time this past weekend with the Rangers, a paintball team from Guatemala. They came up to the States for some trigger time against my guys on Saturday and ended up competing in the largest of our statewide tournament series on Sunday. (A good bunch of guys, btw.) I suspect they are representative of many new teams in the developing paintball world; energetic, eager and perhaps not so overtly competitive as American ballers tend to be. (Or at least they make an effort to be friendly too and certainly minus the obnoxious punk posturing.)

The point of their excursion north was to learn and improve. And they looked to do so in the traditional paintball way; by scrimmaging better players and competing against better teams. Makes perfectly good sense, doesn't it? Pretty much the way you and I did it, too. (And/or the way you're still doing it.)

This was particularly useful for the Rangers because those basic training methods don't really exist in Central America. In part because competitive paintball is so young there, there is only other up-and-coming to butt heads against. They simply don't have available the crucial components of experienced players and established teams. As a consequence I think their weekend up here was (hopefully) very instructive and a bit of an eye-opener as their experience acted as a measuring stick. A way of judging just where they are and an indicator of how much better they need to get in order to measure up to a world standard. (Of course that still leaves them, and teams like them, with the task of finding ways to make-up for the opportunities that still don't exist.)

All that was a rather oblique approach to a (sorta) related topic; competitiveness and the maintenance of a competitive standard. Which brings me back in a very roundabout way to how the PSP is using its classification system. (Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!) Yeah, sorry about this (unless you're too new to be aware of all the other classification-related posts I've written) but at least this is a different argument.

Brief recap: my objection to the UCP, and its application in the PSP, is that it runs players up the ranks unnecessarily and frequently the result is to push many of those players out of competitive paintball. [And the move to add a semi-pro division acknowledges the issue if not the cause.] Most of my arguments have been tied to the effect on players. The system also blurs and/or breaks down the barriers between divisions to the detriment of the overall competition and the idea of excellence.

Here's how. Divisions exist in recognition of different levels of skill and ability that are sufficiently distinct to warrant those separate divisions of competition. And, realistically, to encourage teams of diverse ability to compete. For purposes of competition the divisions represent incremental steps rising to the top level of competition, currently call Pro. Conceptually we're on solid, easily understood ground. The questions I have is how do you maintain a clear distinction between the divisions created and how does that divisional process actually lead to excellence in the game? The answer to both those questions starts with a standard. Teams like the Rangers struggle to find their place in part because there is no consistent standard in their environment, no well defined target to aim for, at least in a practical sense that they can measure themselves against periodically.

I'll finish this in a day or two.