Speak for yourself I get nowt! HahaI think that some sort of University/College league could be a way to get more players involved. Obviously the location being an issue due to only so many sites offering tournament paintball, but now they are bringing over the 5 man woodsball league, this could help with the growth of players and make it more local for people. Not to mention the amount of students getting ridiculous amounts of money from their student loans, the more of this to go towards the paintball industry the better.
See I had no idea idea there was a student cup. Did your university paintball team get to do a stand freshers fair? Yeah I think it is a bit of a blow that we don't get recognised as widely as some other sports, even lacrosse gets more funding. Even the use of a minibus would go a long way I guess. I think Ainsley's idea of a membership is a great way to reduce costs for teams, and with this being open to student teams as well i'm guessing, then this could help reduce overall costs for them as well. Is there anywhere with more information about the student cup? Wouldn't mind finding out a bit more!There is already a student cup which went pretty well last year, but a student series would be amazing. As for students having money to blow, even the luckiest of us (i.e poorest parents or supported ourselves for min 3 years before uni) get just under 9k to live on. I mean when you consider the national average wage it doesn't exactly leave us with loads of money to throw at paintball. Also due to paintball being classified as a recreational activity rather than a sport according to the univeristy and college sports association we get less funding from the student unions than say a darts team..not that we feel we are owed free stuff from anyone but it is a little bit disheartening knowing a "Sports Teams" get thousands of pounds of funding from Student Unions.
Is this with BUCS? If yes, have you seen the terms they have for getting temporary status as a sport. We would need 6 students teams in each quater of the country as well as 5 in Scotland. This just doesn't exist at the minute, at least with sup'air teams.Stay tuned for an update re paintball being recognized as a sport - I have a meeting coming up.