Millennium, NPPL etc. could learn a thing or two from this...

[TJ Lambini]

Toledo Indoor Paintball truly regrets the outclassing that occurred at our April 5, 2002 Young Guns tournament. We apologize to all other teams that entered and will be doing everything in our power to rectify the situation, as well as to deter it from ever happening at another one of our events.

Our first Young Guns tournament was limited to ages 15 and under. Our objective was to give younger kids the opportunity to play against their peers and have a good tourney ball experience. The age restrictions were set with skill levels in mind. The teams that entered were comforted by the promise that they would not be competing against older, and usually more experienced, players. We know that a couple of years can make a huge difference in a player's experience level. The Capital Kidz demonstrated this at the April 5th Young Guns tournament by entering under false pretenses and winning by a landslide.

The Capital Kidz, Jesse Benoit, Joel Paglione and Mike Spinetti, showed birth certificates to prove that they were within the age requirements. The proof of age they showed was false and all the players were in fact seventeen years old.

Toledo Indoor would like to make this up to all of kids who entered. All teams that participated in the April 5, 2002 Young Guns tournament, and were within the guidelines, will be given a free admission to use at any of our future Beginner or Young Guns tournaments. There are many opportunities to redeem this admission in our new 2002 Events Schedule. Visit www.ToledoIndoorPaintball.com for dates.

The Capital Kidz will be stripped from their undeserved win. The following teams will be listed as the winners as soon as their ages are reconfirmed: 1st Place-Rat Dogs, Jr., 2nd Place-Ace's High, 3rd Place-Black Flame. The legitimate winners will be given the appropriate trophies. Our biggest apology goes to the 5th place team. They were denied their rightful spot in the Finals and at least a 4th place win. We will be giving them the 4th Place win but realize that it is not fair because they could've upped their position if they had competed in the finals.

Jesse Benoit, Joel Paglione and Mike Spinetti will be suspended from all of Toledo Indoor Paintball's 2002 events. Any team that includes any of these players on their roster will forfeit the tournament and will not have their entry refunded. I am also notifying other leagues of the incident and encouraging them to take the same action against these individuals.

Players should still feel confident that they will be competing against others who are playing by the rules when they participate in a TIP event. We hope that this incident shows, even more, our commitment to fairness. We will do everything in our power to react fairly when cheating occurs and to deter it from ever happening.

Toledo Indoor Paintball believes that if you love this sport and want it to grow, honest players need to be protected and the integrity of the sport must be kept.

We would like to commend PaintballWilderness.com, Team C.P. and many others for their help and support in investigating and resolving this issue. They did it out of the goodness of their hearts and deserve recognition for promoting fairness.

Sincerely,
Kimberly Heretick
Field Manager/Owner
Toledo Indoor Paintball
www.ToledoIndoorPaintball.com


Now THAT is how to discipline teams...respect is due.

peace

 

[Tyger]

Big time props. A lot of places would have just taken teh money and run, Gotta give 'em credit for integrity.

I'm just wondering if we can retro to Skyball and nail all the sandbaggers there.

-Tyger

 

[Beaker]

Got to agree.

The Millennium ID cards could help a lot - if they were actually used as ID cards .......

Out of interest - how are they used in the NPPL?

 

[Tyger]

The accused team speaks publicly

Joel Paglione, one of the kids who was on the team in question, posted to defend his actions on another board.

http://www.diehardpaintball.on.ca/cgi-bin/ikonboard/topic.cgi?forum=17&topic=52

Without permission, I now cut and paste a PART of it here. It's a LONG POST, but here's the two paragraphs that he defends his actions.

-Tyger

- begin

3 weeks before April 5th, which would make it the weekend of March the 15th, my fellow
teammate Jessy gave me a call with excitement on his voice which usually indicated that he
had heard of a tournament that was fairly cheap seeing that me and mike had not played ball
since last October becuase of the end of the season, Jessy was very eager to start off the
season. He told me exactly, " Joel, i was tlaking to someone who plays tournaments in
Toledo and that there was a tournament going on at Toledo Indoor Paintball that had been
canceled and re-schedualed for April 5th." We knew nothing more then that it was a
tournament at Toledo Indoor that was veryyy cheap (125 Canadian each) and that they were
only excepting 14 teams. Seeing that Jessy himself and Team CP had practiced once before
there. Jessy had told me that the refing there was amazing and very similar to the skills of the
refs in our local area fields, he told me that they had Ultimate air, which deffinitely excited
me. He also told me that he knew how to get there becuase he had once been. I then told
him that he should call this guy who told him about the tourney and get the number to Toledo
indoor so he could register us a place, knowing that there was only 14 teams allowed to be
accepted. We hung up and about a week later later i get another call from a EXTREMELY
EXCITED young man, Jessy who told me that he had the number to Toledo and that his dad
would allow him to use his credit card number to register us as a team, again knowing that
there were only 14 teams allowed. We hung up and I got another phone call about 3 days
later from Jessy, him telling me how pumped he was that this was going to be our first
tournament since Zap. We then began making preporations for the tournament that was only
a few 10 days away. Know i want to make it clear that at this time... 10 days before the
tourney we had still no clue about the age restriction. Now 5 days before the tournament, on
a Sunday night.. Jessy had found us a ride to Toledo from a buddy named James who had
gotten time off work to drive us. I then called my boss and got off work (which wasnt easy)
and so as did Jessy and Mike who we decided to be our 3rd player for the tourney. Mike and I
then got together that night and began to clean up our equipment and guns which became
dusty from no use since the last season. I then got my cocker tuned and timed which costed
me some cash. As of Monday, we allll set and ready.. we were so excited! Now... On
Tuesday April 2nd I got a very depressing phone call from Jessy, who informed me that he
found out that Toledo Indoor had there own website. I didnt know wat was wrong with that so
i asked him, "soo.. " and he responded with. " I was looking on the site today to find a map to
the place from the I-75 for James and I read something on there about the tourney." I said, "
well.. wat?" " Well, it says here that there is an age restriction for all participants of the
Tourney on April 5th. All paintballers must be 15 or younger." I almost droped the phone... I
asked Jessy,
" What the heck are we gunna do.. " I already had time off work as did Jessy, mike and
James. I had gotten my gun tunned and ready to rock.. which costed me a pretty penny, i
had already packed all my gear and had arrangements for my father to drop me off on the
friday at Jessy's where James would drive us to Toledo. Now, the other thing, as far as we
knew.. our registration of using the creditcard was not for nothing.. it was to ensure the
people of Toledo Indoor that they were to book us a spot at the Tourney, meaning that we
assured Toledo Indoor that we were going to be there and that means Toledo could not invite
another team in our place, the registeration credit card was needed so that if we just didnt
show up that they would take the registration fee out of the credit card becuase in their
defense, they could have had allowed another eager team to take our place in the tourney and
made the registration from them. But becuase we registered it made sure that we were going
to be there no matter what and if we didnt show up, Toledo indoor didnt loose anything. Now,
knowing that I was 16 ( Sept 18, 1985) 9 months before the restriction date, Jessy being 16 (i
think Sept 14, 1985) and Mike being 17 ( Early bday..Feb 18, 1985) and by the way we were
NOT all 17..having this in the back of our minds.. me and Jessy were forced to make a not
very easy decision. We either lost 150 $ or watever the registration fee was.. or we had to get
our friends Id's and try to get away with playing the tournament under other names. We took
into consideration that Americans are bigger then Canadians, everyone knows that.. theres
sumthin in their water. We thought for sure we had to make the terrible decision to go just go
for it becuase the tournament was less then 78 hours away. We then broke the news to
Mike, who wasnt too happy with it either but... anyway we skipped skool and left friday for the
tourney. When we got there we showed him the Id's and we continued calling each other by
our real names.. We found there to be 7 teams who showed up.. contrary to wat people *wink
wink* are making it out to be. I WILL SWEAR TO YOU AND SHOW PICTURES OF PROOF
that these guys we played gave us a run for our money and they were the same size and half
of them were taller then us. We actually became friends with the second place team by the
end of the tournament.. They told us they had been to 5 tournaments prior to this one.. one
being the NPPL!..

 

[CROOKED-POPO]

They skipped school to cheat in a tournament. What a banner day that must have been. Come to Waco and give me job security.

 

[eric]

HEY!!

I just played in an open tournament there about 48 hours ago.
The refs were on there game the whole night (tournament went from 6pm till 1am) even though they went about 7 hours without a break. The field was AWESOME! It really promoted fast agressive play with 4 amazing bunkers on the 40. Really nice place.

I got home from that tournament at 6:30 AM. I had to get up at 8:30( damn I wish I drunk coffee)