Who was at College and High School Nationals?

[silencer.1]

Name says it all. Who was at College and High School Nationals, what team did you play for, and how did you do? I know there were a couple of people there cause I saw a few PBN hopper stickers.

I was on the MTU Silver team. I was sporting a silver PJ jersey with STRICKLING and 15 on the back. I also had a brown spectra mask. We didn't do well at all and only maxed one team.

If it weren't for all the rain it might have been a nice weekend.

[Purdue00]

i was there, had a good time, even though it was pouring down rain....

overall Purdue did awesome, with Gold taking second place behind IPW, beating the pants off of an naive Drexler team, and still managing to win the overall series championship...

Purdue Black did decent, we managed to advance to the second round, but the rain really had a huge impact on our effectiveness.. **note to self-- paintball and rain don't mix** but other than that we had a great time and you can plan on seeing us there again next year.

congrats to all who were there, big congrats to IPW, and Purdue Gold, and to team Wildfire from McCutcheon high school.

[paintballrv]

I was there, with the UW-Milwaukee team , because on friday one of the whitewater team members decides to drop out, so me and another whitewater guy played with them,

I hate rain,

[wolf13]

i was there with isu red. our team didn't pull it together very well and didn't advance, i was the guy shooting the blue dark angel from the back.

our rookie team made it to the semis though so congrats to them.
congrats to purdue for the title and to ipw for the win

[bushmaster14]

i was there reffing
the rain sucked but other than that i thought the event went well
i saw lots of good competition and teams endure in spite of the weather
congratulations to all the teams for enduring the weather and helping make that a great event
Nate,
Farside Kids

[hawkey]

Congrats to Purdue, by taking the overall championship. Congrats to IPW you guys really step it up at Nationals don't you.

But the biggest congrats to our buddies at rutgers for placing 3rd.

I don't know that we are naive, just nothing went our way, even a fight with a ref.....

We have lots to work towards next year.

Oh Ben, by the way Clyde DREXLER Is the Portland Trail Blazers' all-time leader in games (867), minutes (29,526), points (18,040), rebounds (5,339) and steals (1,795)

DREXEL University Paintball is not nicknamed "the Glide"

Thanks for a great season

[CrAzEx]

I was there. I would have to say that it was probably one of the worst run tournies ever. There were 6 different fields being used, and each fields head ref had different rules. The worst field was the mounds feild. Instead of playing the whole thing they cut it in half and made the teams start from diagonal corners, giving the near side the significat advantage. The team that had the near side won every game on that field. Also there were normal rules that were changed for the tourny but were never brought up until something happened. Also the HS kids were probably ripped off the most out of anybody. They went into this and were promised 7 games and most of them only played 3, now that must have been worth all the money and effort. Also I think it is great what Chris is doing for the sport with the NCPA, but how could you have this set up so badly that it took 2 hrs to from the end of the first round until the begining of the second. Not to mention that during those two hours is when the weather was best. Purdue you guys have the right to say anything you want about anoher team; however I feel that your earlier post was very unprofessional, but all I can say is oh well so Drexel (not Drexler) had a bad day. We are not naive we just didn't play well. We did get screwed over a bit on how things went, but we dealt with it. We do not go around bragging about how we are so great or anything, we are in this to have fun and play paintball. I am happy that you did well at this tourny. Congrats to everyone who was there and I hope that even with all the crap that went down everyone had a good time.

P.S. It was sure nice meeting the General from MTU. I hope you felt better on Sunday morning.

Jon Roulston
Drexel University

[silencer.1]

I agree with CrAzEx, this was not a well run tourney. We too got the bad side of the mounds field. I think only one team won on that side all day. I know Chris tries hard to get it all done by himself, but he really needed a staff. The power outage didn't help things either, but it was beyond anyone's control.

BTW, thanks to Drexel for helping carry our buddy down from your room and bringing back his wallet. He slept pretty well that night. ;) He didn't remember much of that night though.

[maccrap]

any luck finding that shoe?


congrats to IPW, Rutgers, and Purdue.. and i hope those HS guys we gave the paint to used it well...

I do think the worst part of my weekend had to be the ref attack... not a great thing on the staffing part to have guys who cant keep their head cool. Now im not saying all PB players are the best at that either.. but a ref.. especially a head ref.. should be able to take something in stride and react according and professionally..

again.. congrats to all of you who played... you all deserve it for putting up with that weather...

[silencer.1]

We found the shoe as we were leaving. It was in my room, but he also lost another one. We found that one on our way out from ehe Ohio State guys. We got it from them as they were packing their car.

The ref attack wasn't cool, but I don't think that he should have been provoked in the first place.

[raehl]

First, no one was cheated out of games. Anyone who did not play more than three games did not do so because they chose not to. I asked all teams who wanted to continue playing, and only 4 college and 4 high school teams decided that they wanted to continue playing in the weather. Everyone else stopped playing because they simply didn't want to play in the rain anymore, which I totally understand - but that's their choice, not my (or anyone else's) fault.

As for the time between round one and round two, it wasn't two hours, but it was longer than planned - because due to the rain and teams deciding they didn't want to play anymore, we first had to figure out which teams were and were not going to keep playing, which ended up meaning half of the brackets disappeared . We went from 6 fields down to four, both to lose the two muddiest fields and because there wern't enough teams who still wanted to play to make playing 6 fields worthwhile. That basically redoing the schedule only took an extra 15-30 minutes I think is pretty good.

As for the "ref attack", no player was attacked by a ref. A player did get out of line, get in the face of, and apparently ultimately swing his butt pack at a ref, although it's not entirely clear whether the player intended to do so or it just looked that way to the people who saw it. Nonetheless, the player was *WAY* out of line, and had crossed the line of appropriate behavior WAY before things got that out of control. I put a lot of time into the event, multiple sponsors put thousands of dollars into the event to make it inexpensive for the players, and all I asked is that the players play standup paintball in return. This player failed to do that, and as was stated at the captains meeting, was ejected from the event. There is simply no reason that other players who do an excellent job of exemplifying the best attitude and behavior should have to put up with someone else who isn't returning the favor. I'm not saying the ref was not partially responsible as well, but as they say, it takes two to tango.

I'll be the first to admit that there are plenty of things that can be improved for next year, but I think it's pretty harsh to clarify the tournament as the "worst run tournament ever" or even anything close to that. The kind of weather we dealt with would have crippled plenty of other events. We finished the first round right on time and we finished the finals 30-60 minutes late, but still before dark, altough we did buy ourselves an hour by skipping college semis to make up for the hour and a half we lost having to redo the schedule with teams dropping out of the event due to the weather and with teams being timid about getting to the fields they needed to be at to play - not that it helped that the schedule changed, making the printed ones worthless.

Anyway, just wanted to clarify some whys and hows.

- Chris

[miney]

I'll definately agree with everyone that the weather sucked big time. I have a lot of respect for everyone who toughed it out, I know the rain dampened my enthusiasm for playing, and to make it though the day is a testament to everyone's dedication, drive, and love of the sport.

I also agree that the tournament was a bit rocky - for a multituide of reasons, some communally shared by all teams and some isolated to specific teams.

Everyone has a bias, and that's readily apparent. No amount of arguing or discussion is going to change that, especially regarding team specific concerns - the lines are already too well defined. There's nothing left to prove on either side, and it should just be let be.

As far as general concerns, running a big tounament is phonemonially difficult, and doing it solo only poses a greater challenge. Problems are bound to arise, and did. We should chalk both the good and the bad up as an experience to be learned from - and build on it for a better tourney next year. I for one would be very interested in a constructive discussion on what worked and what could use improvement. With all the experienced players in the NCPA, there's bound to be plenty of good ideas. If Chris feels this type of input from the players would be helpful, perhaps he can setup the appropriate thread/forum for it.

Anyway, congrats to everyone there, especially our boys from Rutgers. Way to go! That barrel tap run was awesome even if it didn't count!

[raehl]

Give me input. The problem I run into most often is having to drag comment out of people. I have a thick skin and a short memory, so don't worry about offending me or anything.

A few of the MTU and ISU guys actually made the "Presidents" meeting we had on Sat night, and MTU definitely had some great suggestions. I have a pretty long mental list myself of things to do differently over the next year.

If you do have comments on the event, probably best to go over to the web board at www.college-paintball.com and start something there.

Thanks,
Chris

[Booya39]

Here is some constructive criticism.
Take as much advice from Forest (sp) as you possible can. He's been doing this for a long long time.

Lamination, Lamination, Lamination. Laminatin the score sheets would be a great idea, or else getting a dry erase board to put all the scores on.

Having a pre-determined schedule would be a good idea. Teams should play all the fields. Teams shouldn't play all five fields during the day and then get stuck on field in the finals that they have yet to have a game on. None of this is anything you are going to be able to throw together at the last minute so planning this out way ahead of time is a plus.

That two hour break in the middle was horrendous. and it wasn't any of this 30-45 min break your talkin about. an easy 2 hours.

[Booya39]

haha. drexler!?!?!? lol. well you're only a freshman. you'll learn :P

[raehl]

No, it definitely wasn't 30-45 minutes, but it wasn't 2 hours either, I'd bet around 90 minutes. It SHOULD have been 40 minutes or so (the refs need a break at some point).

There *WAS* a predetermined schedule (and if you looked, it was printed right below round 1's schedule) - the problem was that when we dropped two fields and half the teams bowed out because of the rain, that schedule became worthless. We got everything moved around fairly quickly (because I also built a lot of flexibility into the schedule), but getting more copies of the schedule was out and people wern't exactly in a rush to get out in the rain and check the new schedule at the scoring table. I also made the mistake of not putting the field numbers on the scoresheets, which would have made it MUCH easier to keep track of where each field was at. Communication with the fields in the second half of the day also became a problem as the water started to bog down the walkie talkies.

The fields I wasn't worried about too much - I talked that issue ofver with other people before the event, and if a team was unlucky enough to play a field they hadn't played before, the other team almost certainly wouldn't have played it more than once. That's certainly no worse than some teams having payed the Hyperball before and others not.

As for lamination, definitely - or don't put the scoring table i the southeast corner of the tent with a south-east wind in a rainstorm. ;) The scoresheets themselves were provided to refs in plastic bags with the intent that they not ocme out of the bags until they were needed, some did that, some not.

Some other ideas for next year would be to get little staging tents near the field entrances for teams to stay under in the event of rain, and also staff volunteers to make sure on-deck teams are at the field they need to be at so we havetime to track them down if they're not there. (Some of the fields were very good about keeping me up to date on teams that wern't there a game or two in advance, others were not.) CPX is putting in gravel in the rest of the space between the fields in the coming weeks (weather prevented that from hapening earlier) and that will greatly help by allowing us to get more stuff between the fields.


Thanks for the comments,
Chris

[Piccolo]

I was there alongside Wolf13 for Iowa State Red, shooting my Dark Blue Mamba LCD Angel

[Booya39]

I cannot go as far as karen "princess" dunn did for ben north, as in apologizing for him in a separate thead, but I will have to say he was on to something. He just didn't phrase it all too well. And the whole drexler/drexel mix-up made it look funnier.

I learned the alphabet before I hit 1st grade. Call me old-fashioned, but I think thats just how it ought to be. There was some mix up with the Drexel squad as to what comes first in the alphabet.... B, G, or W. Somehow they put Gold before Black in the scheme of the alphabet. But thanks to some quick thinkign by Chris Raehl, this was all settled in a prompt matter. Welllllll, until the game was over and then it came up again. And Drexel had to be reminded once again that B (black) does in fact come before G (gold). This was only the beginning of their problems. Unfortunatley I was not present for the whole ref/player fight scene so I'll let that subject rest.

I know Drexel might have their candid replies for this.... so maybe this will help clear the laughter out of the air...

In all seriousness, HOW can you complain that you are playing a better team than you thought you were going to have to???? Do teams somehow reserve the right to not play teams which they feel may pose a threat to their goal of winning the tournament??? I think not. You'll have to play any good teams eventually.

If you were not present for this whole ordeal, basically Drexel was upset that they had to play a Purdue team which was ranked higher than the team which they had expected to face. Because they were not aware of the alphabet scheme for putting the teams in divisions, they just assumed that team 1 meant the better team, 2 for next best, and so on when it was only a symbol of what order they came in alphabetically. Drexel still made the semi-finals, so maybe this is all just a big learning experince for everyone.

ROCK ON

[JCC]

This event sounds a lot like that masters that was held a CPX also. During the masters there was 6"s of rain in 2 days and tornado warnings that brought the action to an end early the first day. Second day one of the sup air feilds had turned into a lake with inflatable rafts and almost all the others netting had been blown down. Also had a several hour delay with rescheduling do to teams that droped out and fewer feilds. Masters also had some shady reffing. How we can get a penalty for a guy walking instead of jogging as quickly as possible to the dead box, but the other team does not get a penalty for intentionaly shooting are dead box cause they thought we were hiding a guy behind us is BS to me. All they had to do was look behind them and see our guy walking around the out side of the feild to the dead box. Bottom line any event at CPX is bound to have intense rains and not so hot of reffing there just seems to be no way of avoding it. lol. So next year Badlandz much better place :)
later,
jcc

[CrAzEx]

Hey Chris,
Do you have the name and email of a HS player, I am not sure what team he played for but I know he was shooting a Black STO cocker. If you could look through your registration sheets and see if you can find someone with that description it would be great. What happened is this team was next to mine, and when they left the unintentionally packed my mask up with their stuff. I would really like to get ahold of him so that I can get this issue straighted out. Thank you.


P.S. I don't want to start anything again about nationals, but the only reason we, Drexel, were upset about the Purdue thing is that we had scouted their other team all day thinking that is who we were gonna play. Oh well it is all over now, so congrats to IPW, Purdue, and Rutgers for taking home the top 3 places.

Jon Roulston
Drexel University
Spikekylee@yahoo.com

[raehl]

Drop me an email at raehl311@yahoo.com so I can let you know what I'm able to determine.

Thanks,
Chris

[Booya39]

Anywhere you go there will be THAT ref or refs that you don't get along with. CPX is BY FAR a better field. Badlandz only cleans up its act the week that Chicago Open rolls into town. You must only go there for the BIG tournaments huh. oh well. later guy.