I first started playing paintball in the Spring of 1997. One of my friends had played a couple of times at an indoor field, and had come back with some great stories, and one heck of a welt. He and a few of our other friends decided it would be cool to play paintball out-doors, and since I knew the owner of a paintball field, we decided on a day, and I made the arrangements.
When we arrived at the field, the sky was over-cast, and it was a bit windy, but otherwise nice and warm. We got our group checked in, rented some field markers (Tippman Prolites as I recall), and immediately started fantasizing about the glory we would bring upon ourselves with our excellent style of play.
There was another group there who were an actual, honest-to-goodness team, and they invited us to play against them. Since there were "only" four of them, and six of us, we figured we should be able to win... *ahem* Wrong. Dead wrong. The first game, we got one elimination, and that was more luck than anything else. One of our guys in full camo had tripped/fallen into a shallow depression, and when the other team was chasing our "dignified retreat", they stepped over him, and he managed to shoot one before he was eliminated.
The second game didn't go so well. I think the closest any of us got to an elimination was when we managed to pin down one of our own guys in a pretty heavy cross-fire. He never actually got hit, but was so covered in paint from shots breaking in the brush around him that it took a good 10 minutes for us to wipe him down. After that, we decided to mix everyone together, and arbitrarily pick teams.
Later on in the day, the professional team left, and another group of six arrived. Someone had apparently forgotten to coach them in the appropriate attire for paintball. Two of them had camouflage or other heavy clothing, but another two were wearing shorts and white t-shirts, and the remaining two were wearing bright colors. Of the 6, only the two in camouflage had half a chance of not being seen in the woods from 300 yards away, and the two in shorts were doing a good job of convincing me they were sado-masochistic.
We played a few games against them, from speed ball to capture the flag. I will give the shorts guys credit for one thing: they had a very high tolerance to pain. At one point, one of them was running directly away from me, so I shot him. He didn't stop. So, I shot him again... and again... and again, until he had a yellow streak down the center of his back. He finally stopped, but not before he gave his comrades one heck of a good laugh. The other shorts guy managed to break through our line and get ahold of our flag. On his way back, he was ambushed by three of our guys, who promptly peppered him with paint. Not one ball broke, and shorts managed to make it all the way back to his base, sore, but victorious.
All-in-all, it was a great day, and I came away hooked on the sport of paintball. I learned a few things as well. I had camo pants, but couldn't find my jacket, so I made due with a big, brown duster I own (australian overcoat). While it worked great at keeping me from feeling any pain, sliding stops and short sprints were rather hard to achieve, and it got very hot very fast.
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