Proper Villains

So, we welcome into the team 2 players from UNDRPRVLGD…Reese Stock and Chris Rangel.  We came out of the box ON FIRE!!!  First 3 games only dropping a body each time.  95, 95, 95 the scoreboard says.  Game 4 is approaching and…..the team never showed! Forfeits all around.  The problem now is that we have a lull…a long, energy draining lull.  We pick up at game 5…and CHOKE!  No other way to put it.  We gave points away, made mistakes in our movement and pretty much killed ourselves.  Another long freaking break, this time for lunch.  Game 6…was meh. We should have won it, but we just didn’t finish and ended up running the clock out with 1 player alive.  Or so we thought.  “Live players check in,” the ref bellowed…so our guy walks over…just to be sent to the deadbox for rub on his hopper.  A brief “discussion” with the ref yeilded…nothing, but I knew that before I started it.

  Insert weather break here…thunder, lightning, downpours. 

  So, back to the forfeit.  They average all of your scores for the day, and you either get 80 pts or your average, whichever is greater…we get 85 pts which puts us into semi-finals with 410 pts.  We end up the 8th seed out of 12 teams.  That puts us in the bracket with fo2three army (12th) and Gravity Aftermath (1st).  Tough draw, but we’re ready to prove we deserve to be here.

  The first game of semi’s is against fo2three…on field 2 (which we haven’t played all day). And it sucks…we get 2 eliminations and that’s it!  20 friggin’ points!  The game before that, Gravity had slapped fo2three with a 95 point victory, only dropping a body.

  Second and final game of semi’s.  We don’t just have to win, we have to max the number 1 seed to move on.  They haven’t dropped a game all day, and haven’t lost many all season. They have yet to be maxed at all in 2008.  We came out with all that we had, planned on moving on, or making them know they had to fight for it….and we did it!  We pulled out the max!  120 points in semi’s and it moved us into finals!

  All of finals are to be played on field 2.  We’ve only had one game on it, and we got b-slapped on it.  A quick walk of the fields and a gut check later, and into battle we go!  With a lot of heart, we fought ACP killers to the very end…We had two back corners locked down with our last two players as the 3 guys left came to get us.  Patience is a virtue, but it takes a lot of paint.  Our 2 back players are down to a hopper each when we’re able to take the upper hand with 2 eliminations back to back. That set up the 1 on 2.  Everyone’s position is known, and the Villains make the move to bunker for the win.  2 alive, pull and hang.

  Yet another lightning break.  Thunderstorm (again), thunderstorm (still), thunderstorm….

  Okay, game 2 of 3 against Konvicted.  A hard fought game that came down to the very end.  I was in the deadbox at the end of this one…listening to my timer tick down to 1 min (we’re still fighting), 40 seconds (we have one at the X, one in back left, one in back right), 30 seconds (back left runs snake tape, clears the field and calls for the flag), 10 seconds….GAME OVER! 3 alive, pull and hang!  That’s two out of 3 games and we won both!

  Final game of the day…playing for first place. Damage Inc. is coming off of 2 wins as well, so this is IT.  We break out, lock some lanes and both teams are keeping it pretty tight.  We send a player to the X and all hell breaks loose.  4 guns go to the center of the field trying to get the advancing player into the deadbox…it eventually happens, but at the cost of several players of their own that were overcome with tunnel vision.  3 on 3 we are…then we get another elimination…2 on 3 and we have a sick gun…the player with the jam in the hopper makes a move to center X…grabs the flag and passes the fifty to put one of the enemy to bed; but he’s eliminated after the pull.  2 on 2.  The Villains get another elimination and are again just about paintless. The timer reminds us that there is only a minute. Then 30 seconds…then 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, game over.  2 alive and the pull for PV. 1 alive for Damage Inc.  We WON!  3 games out of 3 in finals!  PROPER VILLAINS ARE THE D5 TARHEEL OPEN CHAMPIONS!!!!

The CFOA. The largest five man tournament series of paintball in the world. Where people come to prove to other teams and to themselves that they haven’t wasted countless hours of their time and endless amounts of their money, on a sport they have no business playing.  As I sit here and write this, I can’t help but smile. 

 I’m smiling because if you would have asked me a couple of years ago, If I ever thought I’d be playing with a team that could come together and win a CFOA tournament, I would have honestly answered no.  But then again three years we were in a different place.  We were still trying to piece together sponsors.  Still trying to find enough people with the same drive and determination that we shared.  Still learning about ourselves, our abilities and deciding where we really wanted to go with all this paintball hype.  We were a rag tag few with mismatched gear, shooting whatever markers and paint we could afford, driving endless miles and paying huge field fees, just to shoot the like, across fields of spools. 

 But we learned, we grew, we got better and we pushed on.  And now, well now we have a team of people who are willing to help each other grow and learn.  We’ve a coach that knows the sport, our abilities and how to push us.  We’ve sponsors that help us stay on top of the latest gear.  But where is all of this leading? 

 The Tar Heel Open.  Sitting this tournament gave me the ability to do something I don’t normally get to do, watch.  To observe the team from the outside.  To watch the drive of our team grow through out the course of the day.  We wanted to win, we needed it.  I watched other teams fold under the pressure of games, watched them prey on one another as they lost matches, failing to rally behind their teammates and realizing a common goal.  I realized that we have something that other teams don’t.  I don’t really know what word to use to describe it; loyalty, devotion, allegiance, camaraderie, take your pick, they’d all be correct. We have a team that’s come together to form a family.  We share our victories, we share our losses.  We don’t take credit as an individual for wins, we don’t place blame on one another for failure. We’re a team in the purest, truest since of the word. 

 This is what won us the Tar Heel open.  This is what brought us from behind to dominate the event.  This is what got us noticed by other teams. This is what will bring us future trophies and continue to feed our need to better ourselves in our sport and in our everyday lives.  It was hot; we drank water, it rained; we played in the mud, it thundered and lightening; we sat and waited for it to blow over, we were hurt, tired and sore, yet we played on and not once complained.  We knew that whatever our fate, it would be shared.  Everyone had a part to play and everyone went on to do it, for the common goal. We were there to take first place and we took first place.  I’ve never been prouder to be a part of something.  This was the first time we’d taken first place in a CFOA event, but it will not be the last.       

Atleast thats how I feel about it.

Snyder, Jeremy A.