68caliber.com hat eine sehr schön zu lesende Story online gebracht. Larry Naumann kehrt nach nach langer langer Zeit zum Paintball zurück und realisiert das sich sein Hobby von früher in einen High Tech Sport verwandelt hat:I spent the weekend of July 16-18th shooting photos of the NPPL event here in Denver. Dale Ford flew in to do the write-ups and interviews and had asked me to shoot the photos, an opportunity to which I jumped. See I love the game of paintball, but left it for duties of family and every day life many years ago. I was never a great player, but I did my best and loved doing it. I wanted to have a great weekend watching a game I loved while pursuing my current hobby of photography. I was unaware how much I missed the game though, until this weekend. When I played the game, we used semi-auto guns powered by CO2 tanks. Our tournaments were held in tree-lined fields, woods or open fields with pallets for bunkers. We shot at 300fps if we had a chronograph, more or less if we didn’t. The only fans we had were all on the field and we played for the love of the game. We found excuses, to tell our wives and girlfriends, that we were going to the woods with a bunch of guys to shoot each other. These are some of a few memories of this game of Paintball I have. On Friday morning Dale and I headed for Invesco Field at Mile High, home of the Denver Broncos. After a breakfast burrito I was ready for the event and capture a few good shots with the borrowed camera, or so I thought. What I walked into was something like a carnival. There were girls everywhere selling all sorts of goods, Music blaring from almost every vendor tent, 5 fields were set up with blow-up type bunkers of many designs. There was VIP tents, food and drink vendors, bleachers, team tents and even a tent dedicated to the media. There were many media types form websites to television and even print. I am sure to those reading this, this is nothing new, but to me it was a system shock. It was like I woke up in the future and had no clue as to what was going to happen next. The people who were walking around the vendor tents and watching the games were not players, but just fans of the sport. There was a local crowd too; a few local teams had a huge following in the stands. That Friday Dale could not help but laugh at my reaction to every nuance I did not expect. I wanted to know what had happened to the game I fell in love with so many years ago. I think I figured it out; it went through a metamorphosis and turned into a sport! For its change however, some things have stayed true to the game from which it came. Even though the first place purse for the event was 20 grand, it seemed the players were still playing for the love of the game. When on the field there seemed to be severe hatred between some teams, afterwards there was still the chatter of “good game, nice shot” and so on. Don’t get me wrong, there were some teams that did hate each other but those for the most part were very few. The tools of the game have changed too. Gone is the camouflage, replaced by high-tech uniforms, jerseys, belts, gloves, goggles and even shoes. Gone too are the guns we used to use. Today they are electronic triggered markers with force fed loaders capable of pushing paint faster than you can pull the trigger. The bunkers of yesterday would kill today’s player. Today they have air filled vinyl bunkers, easy to clean and you can run into them at a full sprint without getting hurt.Yes my game is gone, replaced by a hi-tech, big money sport; where teams are sponsored and flown around the country to compete in high profile televised events. A sport that is rigidly timed and fans are not left waiting for a game to start. In this tournament they had a new game scheduled every 9 minutes on every one of the five fields, and they were running early the first two days! Yes, the game is gone and I have only one question left, where do I go to sign up?
