[rOcKiNtHeDm5*la*]

How do you guys think 187 did for their first year in pro? Maybe we can get the players to answer as well!

I for one think they had a great year, and 2013 looks very promising!

[Seekey]

They beat out Thunder, Aftershock and CEP for the season....Getting wins on solid *** teams like Ironmen and Xfactor.....For a first year in Pro thats pretty damn good if you ask me.

If they are rolling the same roster over into next year I'd expect some gains over the next season. Maybe not a top 4 but a Sunday appearance is certaintly a safe bet.

They certainly have what it takes to win with their rock solid divisional record. They just need a little more time to adjust to the Race-To-7 and the Pro level in general.

I'd love to see them win an event and I'm sure it will come in time.

[4x4 rider]

Agreed. Keep up the hard work, and keep practicing other pro teams!

[Fox4paintball]

Well….I had hoped that one or more of the players would have answered this question by now. Since they haven’t, I’ll take a stab at answering it for you.

It’s difficult to look at this season and say we were successful – no team has the goal of winning only 4 matches in an entire season. We came into this season fully expecting to compete and win our share of games. I guess our share was just a little less then what we thought it was. We had a goal to be playing on Sunday at least once this season and while we had our chances we couldn’t close out the games we needed in order to make that happen.

From a scheduling stand point the league is really broken up into two divisions – the top 8 teams and the bottom 4 teams. 100% of our matches were against teams in the top 8. That means we always had a tough road to earn wins and possibly make playoffs. We never got the chance to play Thunder, CEP, Aftershock or Heat this season. Just the way the seeding worked out, but it would have been nice to play all the teams at least once.

I took a look at all the teams games through MAO and looked at how many points each team scored in the prelims against top 8 teams. With 100% of our points coming against Top 8 teams we had a total of 53 points. This was good enough to put us in second place with the top team getting 56 points against Top 8 teams. I don’t really know what this says about us or other teams, but I feel it shows we can hang with the best teams and compete. We had a tough schedule yet still managed to win a few hard fought matches and compete in several others.


The positives for the year:

All our wins came against top 8 teams – Ironmen, x-factor, vicious and Impact (ok – they’re not a top 8 team, but they didn’t play the whole season either – I think they can be a top 8 team).

We took the Russians into overtime twice, losing both matches due to rookie mistakes.

We lost to Dynasty twice by a combined point’s difference of 3 points.

We were tied with Damage 3-3 with 6 or so minutes remaining in the game at World Cup. Unfortunately that is when they decided to drop the hammer and they won 7-3.

We continued to play our style of paintball – while at the same time learning the styles of other teams in the league. This was a huge learning curve for us and I believe it’s not over just yet – we still have plenty to learn about the pro play and other teams.


The negatives for the year:

Roster changes – while we had the same core players (Nick, Mike, Max, Dan, Greg, Eddie) for the entire season we did lose a few players (Brian, Doug, Shaun) during the year to life changes and had our share of injuries as well (BJ being the worst of them with a broken hand just before cup). This forced us to play many events with only 7 or 8 players. That just isn’t acceptable in my view. We need to work on filling out our roster and getting to a solid 9 or 10 players.

Quality of practice – we struggle to find the best use of our time and resources at practice. The nearest pro teams to us are CEP, Aftershock and Damage and none of them are really all that close to us. If we want to practice other pro teams it’s going to cost us a significant amount of money.
I’m sure there is more I can write about, but I’ll leave that up to some of the players to jump in and add to what I’ve written.
If you have specific questions, feel free to ask them.

[paintballbj11]

Love how Dave gives us 2 hours to answer and then say he’s disappointed because we weren’t quick enough… lol

Our first year in pro I think was bitter sweet. We were determined to make Sunday this season and obviously we didn’t make that happen so we are a little disappointed. However, in order to achieve that goal our task every day, every week, and every event was to improve, and we definitely did that. Each player had to improve individually to do everything in the game better. From the beginning of the season to the end I think we were smarter gun fighters, quicker to recognize openings, and able to recognize offense and defense. Our team as a whole needed to improve and I believe we did that. From the beginning of the season to the end we were more conscious of how other teams were trying to exploit us, able to recognize how to close games as a team, and learned flow of the game and when to push. We improved, in all these aspects, which is a good sign of great progress on our road to a Sunday paintball team.

I am probably more disappointed than most because I was working so hard before cup and then wasn’t able to help my team. It’s a tough pill to swallow going into the winter.

[sumorai]

Looking at the APPA data, it looks like VICIOUS had a better first season than you guys, but they also had the benefit of playing a season in Semi-Pro the year before. You guys made the jump straight from D1, which is definitely a larger hurdle. Thunder did about the same as you guys this year, but they've also played "pro" in NPPL before as well. CEP came up from D1 also, but their first year in Pro PSP came with only one win. Compared to these other newer PSP teams, you guys seem like you're on a good course.

Regardless of how you compare to other teams, you guys definitely stood out this season. Watching the webcast of your games, there's always plenty of positive commentary and compliments from Matty, Lasoya, etc. The teams you've played against speak highly of you as well. You guys came out swinging and made your mark.

Get yourself a solid roster of 9-10 guys. Get some better practice in. Make it to Sunday.

Speaking of practices... Are you more likely to get practice time in with T1 if they decide to join the Pro ranks next season? You guys have had good practices with them in the past. It seems like it'd make sense.

Will you change how much time the team dedicates to reffing foxball in 2013? I mean, sure, I appreciate their hard work reffing those events, but I think their time would be better spent practicing.

[Fox4paintball]

Gabe,

Reffing foXball will not impact our practice time. Our overall goal for 2013 practice is to create a Home and Away practice against another pro team for each of teh 5 events. This will provide us with 10 solid practices, 2 before each event. After that it will be a couple of Saturdays and/or Sundays doing drills.

They'll still ref some foXball

[Fox4paintball]

BJ....2 hours? the original post was put up on 11/2 - that is 5 days ago.

Come on man

[mc2]

I expected a much better showing this year showed and I'm sure everyone else feels the same way. I know everyone has the mindset that we are going to beat everyone we go up against or else why even play - you need to have that attitude or you should walk away.

Sure we got some wins and earned the respect of most teams and fans which is great but that is not our (or at least my) main goal. Every tournament is the same for me - first goal - make it to Sunday, second goal - win the tournament. We weren't able to make it to Sunday any event and that straight up sucks. Sure what Dave said is true we always played 4 of the top 8 teams in our prelim matches but you got to beat the best to be the best.

We had matches where we could have won but made mistakes that costs us a win. We are all conscious of these errors and I feel we got better event to event learning from our past.

Talking with other players/teams we definitely need to practice other Pro teams. Two weeks before Cup this year we were able to practice Damage and they gave us some great advice while down there. We asked T1 if they wanted to practice the weekend before Cup but they did not want to make the drive up to Fox4 as we have traveled down there 3 or 4 times and feel it is their turn to travel.

As for reffing Foxball - that will not change since reffing if how we offset a portion of our overall expenses.

Carlin

[paintballa12788]

We will definitely return the favor of driving to you next year!

[paintballbj11]

Originally Posted by Fox4paintball

BJ....2 hours? the original post was put up on 11/2 - that is 5 days ago.

Come on man

I could have sworn it said the same day the first time I looked at it. That time stamp must have been doctored

[L.A. Astronaut]

Dave you described your style of play vs other teams style. Care to extrapolate? I want to know what it feels like to play certain top 8 teams.

[JJRoth]

I enjoyed watching you guys play this year. I think the team is headed in a great direction.

[Hot Nuts22]

Can't wait to see what this team has in store for next season!

[sumorai]

Originally Posted by JJRoth

I enjoyed watching you guys play this year. I think the team is headed in a great direction.

Would have liked to see you guys play each other. Maybe next year.