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"SAN DIEGO, Nov. 14 - Five artificial-turf paintball fields were laid out like giant green dominoes in the Qualcomm Stadium parking lot here: a setting befitting a sport that aspires to grandeur but that is as yet a funky outsider.
But long before you could see the players, goggled and masked and carrying sophisticated militaristic toys, you could hear the chaotic splatting, a joyous flatulence made by hundreds of men, and a handful of women, plastering one another with pink and yellow gobs of goo.
An estimated seven million paintballs were being shot by players from the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe. Splat Nation had converged here, with a message of a new recreational gospel.
"We want to get paintball into the living rooms of America," said Chuck Hendsch, president of the National Professional Paintball League, which put on the event Saturday and Sunday, a tournament that attracted 175 seven-member teams, dozens of gear makers, a handful of camera crews, a brace of young celebrities and 10,000 to 20,000 spectators.
You may have heard of paintball as it is played in its primitive form, recreationally in the woods or on bordered fields by friends and neighbors: capture the flag with faux arms. That game still exists; there are about 2,500 paintball sites around the country. But that image does not begin to suggest the intensity of the game that has evolved, or its furious growth and rising popularity.
Nearly 10 million people played paintball in the United States last year; some 2 million participate in more than 50 other countries, including Greece, Russia and Iran. According to SGMA International, a sporting-goods trade group, wholesale sales of paintball equipment in 2003 were close to $400 million, more than double what they were five years earlier.
Evidently, the crucial element in paintball's growth is that it creates true believers and evangelists. It is hard to underestimate the seriousness with which it is played, the fierce passion of devotees or their desire to further popularize and legitimize - Mr. Hendsch's goal is the Olympics - what many freely admit is their gripping obsession.
"I tried to give it up, to leave the game," said Tony Thomas, 31, a restaurant manager from Austin, Tex., who said he had been paintballing for 15 years. He said he had felt he needed to concentrate on his career, "but life just wasn't the same without it."
In the league's format, teams face off against each other for a maximum of seven minutes, when the firing of paintballs is furious. Players try to advance from barrier to barrier, thus creating more favorable angles from which to shoot down their opponents. Strategy, discussed and practiced beforehand, is carried out on the run; above the din of splatter you can hear the players screaming directions and warnings at one another. Invariably, everyone ends up out of breath, blood pumping furiously.
Yes, it is militaristic in nature. Yes, winning is paramount, and yes, everyone admits that the testosterone level on the field is off the charts. The paintball world is skewed male and young; more than one person compared it to a video game come to life. But it was also true that older players were plentiful, and that the atmosphere was oddly clean-cut and family friendly. The equipment is pricey; the latest generation of paintball gun tops out at about $1,500. Competing is expensive, too. The teams in San Diego paid entry fees of $1,350 to $2,000.
What many older players say they discover is a satisfying sense of camaraderie and teamwork. "It's the best team sport I've ever played," said Matt Schmidt, 31, who owns a vending machine business in London and traveled to San Diego with his team, Shockwave U.K.
Asked how the women in his life have reacted to his involvement, he said, "Women and paintball very often don't mix, to tell the truth."
The Femmes Fatales, a women's team from Fort Myers, Fla., would disagree. It was started by a former dancer with business savvy, Tami Adamson, who was introduced to the game by her husband. She was not interested in playing herself, she said, until it occurred to her that a team of attractive women would be a magnet for industry sponsorships and television cameras. She was right.
Interestingly, players rarely talk about "killing." For the most part, the lexicon is specific to the game: guns are not guns, they are markers. And postgame discussions among players tend to be as focused on the circumscribed world at hand as they are, say, in basketball.
Ask almost any paintballer about the appeal of the game, and the response comes back: "the adrenaline rush."
"It's just the high you get off it; that's it," explained Kevin Mitchell, a former major league baseball player who, along with several other players, discovered paintball during the baseball strike of 1994. He gave up paintball after he retired because he said he had gotten too big and too slow to compete.
"I can't play with those guys," said Mr. Mitchell, who was a spectator this weekend.
Paintball was first played as a survival game in a New Hampshire field in 1981 with a dozen men, including one who was a reporter for Sports Illustrated and wrote about it. Their guns were made to be used by farmers to mark cows and by foresters to mark trees.
Since then the game has gone through innumerable permutations, and several, including 10-man paintball and X-Ball, a cross between paintball and hockey, have tournament circuits of their own.
The San Diego event was officially known as the 2004 N.P.P.L. Super 7 Commander's Cup. It was the last of five similar tournaments held around the country this year by the 12-year-old league, whose efforts to expand the game's young core audience was much in evidence.
Walking the grounds on Saturday afternoon, satisfied with the controlled chaos around him, and the evident high spirits of Splat Nation, Mr. Hendsch was approached by a young man who said that he was a paintballer and that he had financing for a feature film about paintball. Would Mr. Hendsch be interested in discussing it?
"Absolutely," Mr. Hendsch said, handing the man his card. "We're all about promotion."
End of article.
