Popularizing paintball

[raehl]

Well..

UMass doesn't have the only college owned and operated field. Michigan Tech has one, Eastern Kentucky has one, Rutgers has one (although I don't think that one is public), Iowa State is getting one, Purdue has one, although they've just used it for the MICT so far. By "Northeast", I was mainly referring to the New York metropolitan area. Thinks are better up in New England where there's more free land again.


The money comes from varying sources - special funds for capital improvements, running events, as part of athletic/recreational facilities development (Paintball is big at Tech, so when Tech decided to drop a few mil on a new activities center, paintball got included.) A basic field is only about $15k to set up.

As for college/hs ball - it's not by any means being shoved town anyone's throat. There's a demand for it - especially at the high school level. There are many many many more kids out there who want to play on a high school team than who want to have anything to do with NPPL, which shouldn't be surprising, most of them are beginners. High school kids see starting a club or team as something they can be successful at, so it's something they're more willing to try.

High school and college clubs and teams are only a natural progression for any sport; paintball is no exception.


As for fundraising, first thing you do is learn every intricacy of your school's funding process and abuse it to the maximum. Have a student board that hands out money? Get all your friends elected. Have a member of the administration? Get them going to club outings. After that, if you want to make some big money, run a scenario game - but that's also a HUGE amount of work. Less work would be doing a charity intra-fraternity tournament, 50% for the club, 50% for a charity.

There's also the more mundane things, like selling discount cards or coupon books, but I've never really found the money you get worth the time you put into it. And the slightly more financially viable efforts like car washes, etc.


- Chris

 

[nandakjohwah]

i have 55 members in my club, school has enough equipment to support 10 members, about 10 member in the club own their own equipment, the rest use rentals on the school budget on a first come first serve

our club budget goes something like this..

$100+ goes to food for meetings.. probably going to cut back on this, right now it consists of pizza and soda or burgers and soda
$500 goes to fields for entry fees, # that need rentals, air, and lower price on paintball
$200 goes to to transportation


ive been trying to do raffles but not many people seem motivated to put money into the raffle, i attempted to do a 50/50 but the school won't allow it

 

[raehl]

Yeah.

IF you did a raffle without getting a stae permit first, that would almost certainly be illegal (as in, it's been illegal wherever I've looked, so I'm assuming MA is the same.)

- Chris

 

[Y2chris99]

Originally posted by Little Jon
well,, basically....people at my school have proved....one mate said ' paintball is for the sad people who cant get in the army and think their playing war'

of course...he hasnt seen tounry ball...most people that havent will say this...then i showed some clips and mags to a few mates and they go...wow its alot more organised and bigger than i thought!!! can i go sometime???

also....we need to stop the 'replica' guns....this gives us a bad image cos people think its war games..2 guys at school proved this by saying stuff like...yeah when i start i say stuff like 'death before dishonour' very sad and ruins it

I h8 these ppl! quite a few r my m8s as well. we need 2 round them up and show them wot we think of them

 

[nandakjohwah]

yuck so many rules and regulations

 

[paintpimp]

As for budgets. Currently the Paintball Club RSO gets a whopping 50 dollars per year for photocopies. When the club was first started in 95 the option was a normal budget so players could travel to the local fields to play, which at the time were charging 125 a case for the old 2500 round cases, or take enough cash to start a field (10marker packages, chrono, fill station, etc) and recieve a little under 30acres on campus property about 1 mile from the center of campus. That's what the club chose, and it's worked out. The field is now self funding, paint goes for around 50 a case, rentals are dirt cheap. Clubs trying to start up should look into this option if their school owns a lot of unused property, tie ins with business students, engineering students (to build bridges, facility designs, etc, etc), and even forestry students helps your cause as well.

Chris

 

[raehl]

The big thing about running a field...

Is that you need a stable organization to do the work. Field owners charge money to run a field for a reason, so make sure you know what you're getting into. It's not something that just takes care of itself.


- Chris

 

[Fly]

Hmmm!!!

I've been playing paintball now for about 7-8 years, now one thing I've noticed is that watching a tour'ney ie: sup-air is piss boring unless your abut 10 meters away and you understand whats going on! If your gonna watch PB on TV you wanna see the ball leaving the gun and then hitting the player on the other team, all you see on the Vids is put,put,put,put,put and then the players gun goingup in the air. In the publics eye Paintball is a war game! not a sport! as I've said Ive been playing for 7-8 years and my wife (God bless her) thinks I dress up in Camo gear and play John Rambo (Only in the bedroom sweetie!!) so there you have. Hope it made some sense coz I've been an the TVR's and I dont understand a word of it.

 

[KillerOnion]

You've been playing that long and she still thinks that? Why hasn't she been paying attention? Do you ever invite her to the field or tournaments at all? Something is missing here.

 

[JoseDominguez]

Dead easy, use the same approach that Sony used with the playstation.
Think about it, 15 years ago, computer games etc... were a kids thing, vaguely sad and not covered in the media much. Now they are the biggest entertainment product in the world....... paintball needs the same approach, don't change the sport, just change the advertising then we'll be sorted. Make it a lifestyle thing, it'll catch on much quicker than pushing the sport aspect, then once it's accepted we are sorted.
This does mean getting rid of x-fire and anything else that smell a bit star-trek...... unless we want to end up on the bloody scalextric and model train channel on Sky.
Make it cool, get us in FHM and loaded and not just the industry mags.