One of the main reasons I have gotten so involved in this thread and others like it is because of a total belief in the ultimate attraction of real tourney ball.
I say ‘real’ tourney ball because I am gonna distinguish it from what most of us over here indulge in because real tourney ball should be made of people who aspire to improve, who aspire to win and will dedicate themselves accordingly.
Our tournament scene is made of no such animals as I have suggested in other posts.
The demographic that goes to make up our tournament scene is more akin to occasional / armchair sportsmen who pay lip service to seriousness and commitment.
So what the hell am I offering here?
I cannot believe that the people who get involved in our tournament scene don’t wanna jump on the real tournament bandwagon.
But how does what I am advocating differ from what most of our tourney players are doing now?
As I have said, most of them are going through the motions; they get their gear bags from under the stairs about once a month, maybe wipe their marker down and trudge off to the Cleethorpes five man to run around a field pretending to be a paintballer.
We all should realize the score by now, I ain’t gonna labour this point no more but if these self same players could, just for one day, live the life of a pro player, I honestly believe things would change because the most glaring difference they would experience is one of satisfaction.
I use a pro player as an example because for the most part these guys are the ones who best exemplify what I am saying most ballers over here are missing.
The real and deep satisfaction a pro player will get is when his coach or maybe himself is told to practice a technique, maybe a snap shot; he goes away practices it..and practices it and practices it some more…… and then it happens……..he unleashes that practiced snap shot on an unsuspecting world and bam !
His new found skill begins to reap rewards….think about this because greater satisfaction is hard to find in any sport when a practiced technique translates itself into an armband being sliced off with a new found artistry.
I often use an actual example of this, it may seem an indulgent one but I promise it happened and I also promise it applies to any of you guys out there who read this.
When we developed our snap shot on Nexus, a lot of thinking went into its development, it looks simple but it took a few months to nail down the actual mechanics and get it practiced.
In our first year, we played Toulouse and I was standing on the line with Ollie Lang and Ryan Greenspam and Chuck from Dynasty, all four of us were watching Nexus play some German team when Jamie Abbott pulled off an unbelievable blind snap shot right in front of us all gogging the German chump which caused Ryan I think to blurt, ‘what the fcuk was that’?
He was impressed and at that moment I felt so proud of my team and what they had been doing to train that snap into the fabric of their play.
Jamie had executed exactly what we had all been practicing and it was instantly recognized by those Dynasty players as something special and trust me, that takes some doing to impress those guys and the player who did it had been playing novice ball just 6 months before.
If Jamie can do it, (in fact most of the team could do it at that time) then all of you can do it and it was this feedback of training, execution and results that became the bedrock for our training during that first year.
The positive feelings anybody can get because of this process is about the best thing you can feel outside of picking up trophies.
Sure, a lot of the guys can go play that Cleethorpes five man and in their own minds they can and do enjoy it but there is so much more to enjoy if they can just look from outside the box.
Training isn’t hard work if you wanna do it, and if you wanna improve and you enjoy getting results then trust me, you will WANT to train and this loop is what the majority of our ballers fail to appreciate.
You can play paintball and enjoy it on one level but competitive paintball when played correctly can offer up so much more than just ‘playing’.
It is a quantum leap in enjoyment and for those of us who have jumped on that bandwagon, it remains a tragedy that most of our tournament ballers do not want, or have no idea of, what they can be part of.
The Yanks ooze this type ethos, and we ……..hmmmmm …well, we all know how that one goes………I would love there to be some sort of academy of learning over here and I certainly would help out but I fear the uptake would be minimal at best and wouldn’t last, I would soooooo love to be proved wrong.
