Played by over 15 million people in over 110 countries, the game of Paintball is taking on a whole new image in Ireland this week. This year’s All-Ireland Inter-Varsity Speedball competition will take place at Barrage Paintball, Ashbourne on Saturday April 14th, played for the first time on a tournament standard ‘Sup’Air Ball’ field. Organised by DIT with the assistance of the Irish Paintball Player’s Association (IPPA) and sponsored by AIB Student Banking, the event will be attended by teams from DIT, Griffith College Dublin, NUI Maynooth, Royal College of Surgeons, Trinity College Dublin, UCD and University of Limerick. 80 students in total will be competing and there will be 80,000 paintballs shot in just a few short hours.
‘We intend the event to promote paintball as a serious and competitive sport and also to introduce speedball to the general public’, says Richie Buttle, Chairman of the DIT Paintball Society ‘While the familiar image of paintball is a day spent romping around the woods, speedball is the tournament version of the game played on an open field or arena, with inflatable bunkers set up to provide cover for the competing teams as opposed to trees and bushes’.
As the name suggests, speedball is a far more energy intensive and athletic version of paintball than that played in the woods format, or Woodsball it is called. Games frequently last less than five minutes with players firing hundreds of paintballs during this time. All games have the basic premise of capturing a flag placed in the centre of the field and bringing it to the opposition’s base. Points are awarded for eliminating opposing players, capturing the flag and also for how many players a team has left ‘alive’ at the end of each game. A player is deemed out if they, or any equipment they bring on to the field, is hit or ‘marked’ by the opposition.
The Millennium Series, a European series of speedball tournaments, is paving the way for paintball development in Europe. In a few short years, the Millennium Series has been instrumental in the moving of the sport from the shade of the woods into the public domain of stadiums and now towards the world spotlight of television and mass media .With ever increasing media coverage and high profile locations such as Crystal Palace Stadium, National Stadium Lisbon, Barran Stadium Toulouse , paintball in Europe and in Ireland is definitely on the way up.
The groups have been drawn by the head marshal, Baptiste. They are as follows:
Group 1
Trinity Avalanche
RSCI
UL
UCD
Group 2
Trinity Blizzard
DIT
GCD
NUMI
There will be a round robin in the group stage, each team playing a total of 6 matches in the group stage and then the two leaders on points, will play off in the final.
For more info, check out: http://www.paintballer.ie/college/