Sacramento Practice

Ahh the paintball road trip, always lots of fun to look back on. But, during the trip some moments are pure fun or simply a living hell storm.

We all met at one house Thursday and loaded up, doing several headcounts and double checks it seemed like we had everyone. But in the back of my mind it seemed wrong, even Cole felt the same. Then someone said something about Andrew, turns out no one had spoken to him all week and he thought that we were still leaving Friday. So queue up a bunch frantic calls, text messages, and emails to Andrew with no success of contact with Andrew. Feeling pretty shitty about forgetting a player, we mounted up and crossed the border.  Just when we got to Bellingham Andrew called back, turned out he was sleeping early thinking he would have to be up early to leave Friday. We stopped for food telling him to hurry the hell up and get a ride to Bellingham. These delays coupled with the fact that we were driving with a trailer, which limits our speed, meant that we didn’t arrive in Sacramento until much later than anticipated.

After arriving in Sacramento we got some rooms at a Motel 6 not far from the paintball field. Turns out that the area we were staying in was not the safest in town. Several locals were shocked and asked “Why the hell are you staying there?” This did lead to a very interesting night. At some point early in the evening when I went to get some food, someone drove over the fire hydrant in the parking lot. So there was this geyser of water that was going on for hours and flooded the entire parking lot. The cops showed up at one point while we were outside drinking and advised us to return to our rooms and drink there. Turns out the cops were there to bust some people, which lead to some fights. Was a very interesting night.

On Saturday night we switched hotels and stayed at the Holiday Inn, which was very nice. The only real bummer was that a million baseball kids checked into the hotel with their families and mobbed the pool and hot tub until it closed. I was really looking forward to a soak in the hot tub. But Kyle spoke to the front desk and negotiated for us to be able to use the room after checkout time to shower. He managed to secure us the room until 4 o’clock Sunday, which would make the drive home so much nicer, driving for 14 hours dirty and gross just plain sucks.

The facility where we were practicing was amazing, it has 3 turf fields and a few scenario fields intermix. On both days there was a tournament also being run on one of the fields. On Saturday there was a 3 man tournament using the Phoenix PSP layout and on Sunday there was a 5 man tournament using the same layout. All the while there were renters and equipment owners playing recreational paintball everywhere, really shows the strength of the player base of the area.

While the other 2 turf fields had the PSP layout setup we were there to practice 7 man on the Huntington Beach layout. This was the first time I have ever played against a full pro team, I definitely felt intimidated and nervous. But, playing against better teams and players is how you get better and that is what I was there to do. Over the two days we played against: Oakland Blast, Sacramento XSV, San Francisco Explicit, and Edmonton Impact.

Man did I have a blast every game I played. Every time I was on the field it felt like every shot I made could break the game open, every mistake or missed opportunity I made screwed up the game for the whole team. It was a great intense atmosphere, but at the same time the practice was super smooth. Getting a game was easy and the teams were all eager to get playtime and offer some advice as well.

Over the two days of practice I was able to try some different moves or plays, and observe blind shots and good areas to get kills from. Playing against the pro teams also helps confirm that some moves or shots were either there or very difficult to try. We brought down 10 players to the practice so I had to rotate in sometimes, but it also helps a lot to watch pro teams and see how they play a field. It definitely gives you good ideas for you to try.

During the two days of practice we played as many games as we could, we lost many games but were able to win a few as well. It is all part of learning how to be a better team and translate those wins on tournament day.

Thanks again to: Dave Baines, Explicit, XSV, Blast, Impact, and my team. It was great trip and I’m really looking forward to Huntington Beach.

Dan

Vancouver Vendetta

Pictured (Left to Right): Brian, Kyle, Cole, Fred, Mike, Andrew, Daniel, and Alex. Not pictured: Ryan and Tommy.

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