Originally published in the October 8, 2010 issue
After a rough defeat at the Midwest Paintball Players League Tournament last Saturday, Bradley’s paintball team has decided to increase practice time to improve and try to gain more recognition on Bradley’s campus.
Junior player Kyle Blais said Bradley has a roster of skilled players with tons of potential, but communication is something that needs to be improved.
“We have just not played enough together to communicate effectively on the field or to know each other’s tendencies and habits,” he said.
Although the team has been around for several years, team member Matt Daly said new students are always welcome.
“We are still open to more members and if people are interested we would love for them to try it out,” he said. “We will be meeting on Fridays so if any non-members want to come and just play recreational paintball they are welcome to do that as well.”
Daly said this tournament was a way to test out the new team.
“Now that we know what we need to work on, we can perfect our team and be more successful,” he said. “Future tournaments should definitely have a better outcome because of more fluid teamwork.”
Team captain Alex Luke said the team will have more practices on Sundays in order to combat teamwork issues.
“We are going to have more team building activities and drills too,” he said. “This team has only had about three practices in total and for the most recent tournament, we were facing teams that have been playing for many, many years, some for a decade in fact.”
Luke said the team struggled at the tournament due to a low number of teams in attendance. There was also a low turnout at the tournament.
“Seven teams of five people showed up, a total of 35 people,” he said. “We needed to have at least 12 teams in order to have enough money to pay for the prizes. We couldn’t have things like cool guns.”
Blais said he hopes more publicity will result in more support from students.
“We will do our best to better advertise our next tournament in hopes to get some fans to come out and see what tournament paintball really is,” he said.
Hosting an activity at an upcoming Late Night BU is also an option for the team, Blais said.
“We are hoping to have a tent to let people shoot tournament-style guns at targets to raise money to support the team,” he said.
Blais said the team is looking to increase student involvement.
“We are working with one of the field owners about the logistics of possibly putting together a campus-wide tournament where different greek houses and residence halls can compete against each other,” he said.
Any students interested in joining the team should contact Luke at aluke@mail.bradley.edu.