Lock and load: paintball gets messy

By Margo Consul

It is the fourth most popular alternative sport in the United States. It is played in 105 countries, and 104 colleges have a team. Santa Clara has a team -- a really good team.

During their inaugural season in 2006, the Santa Clara club paintball team took first at the National Professional Paintball League Huntington Beach tournament, sixth at the National College Paintball Association National tournament and finished ranked No. 13 nationally. During the 2007-08 season the Broncos finished 25th at nationals and No. 19 overall.

"We put ourselves on the map in terms of the college level paintball because there wasn't really a solid foundation on the West Coast. "It was mostly the Midwest and the East Coast where it's a big thing for college paintball," founder Eugene Bowers said.

"We were one of the first teams on the West Coast to really make an impression."

Santa Clara is the only NCPA team in Northern California. Their hard work has earned them sponsorships from local and international vendors. They are sponsored by Santa Clara Paintball, a field located at the Santa Clara fairgrounds and Midway Paintball facility in Vacaville. The owners of Midway are also the owners of a local paintball store where Santa Clara gets their gear.

The team is also sponsored by Angel Paintball Sports, a gun company located in the United Kingdom. On a larger level, Angel Paintball Sports sponsors the professional team Joy Division in Stockholm, Sweden, who took third place in the Paintball Sports Promotions World Cup this year.

Santa Clara Paintball Club President Ian Ghows described paintball as the hybrid game of tag and capture the flag.

Five players are on field for each team, and each game lasts for five minutes. The goal of the game is to eliminate as many of the players on the opposing team while trying to capture the flag and hanging it up on the opposite side. If a paintball hits a player and breaks on him or here, then it counts as a hit and the player is eliminated. If it bounces off of the player, it doesn't count, said Ghows.

"It is its own sport. It is hard to judge it by the standards of other sports," Ghows added.

One of the primary differences between paintball and other professional sports is the lack of focus on gender division. There is no advantage to being a male versus a female when playing paintball as is assumed to be in other sports.

"I think that is something that really helps (paintball). A lot of people will say with like with soccer, male soccer players are more physically developed and rough than female players etc., whereas in paintball its doesn't matter if you are a male or a female," Ghows said.

Contrary to other popular sports, paintball is one that favors the smaller player.

"The smaller the better for sure, you're just not as big of a target," Bowers said.

Bowers first played paintball at a friend's birthday party.

"I went out and played and I just had a phenomenal time," Bowers said. "I left it for a while and it wasn't until high school a friend of mine had their own paintball field in their back yard, in Almaden like out in the woods and we would just play out on the weekends."

After playing informally and picking up a job as a referee at the field, Bowers joined a competitive team. He worked his way up to a semi-professional team that he played on until his freshman year at Santa Clara. He gave up his spot on the team to found a club team for Santa Clara.

"I did that in high school. I started my own paintball team, so I wanted to keep that tradition going. I started from scratch to kind of have the pride of starting up what will hopefully stick for years to come," Bowers said.

Ghows played paintball in high school informally with a group of friends until his junior year. When he came to Santa Clara, he was shocked to find a competitive paintball team.

"I thought cool, an actual paintball team! I want to join and see what that is like, to see what it is like at the tournament level and to turn it up a notch," Ghows said.

Despite the popularity among college students, paintball has been stereotyped as a violent sport, but Ghows feels that is incorrect in comparison to other sports.

"You have players getting into fist fights in hockey, guys who are running at each other and diving at each other in soccer," he said. "In rugby they are hitting each other. The difference is that it is physical hands-on contact while ours is a gun analogy."

There is a movement within the sport to start calling the guns markers because people feel that the word gun sounds too violent. One of the other major concerns is the pain caused by the paintballs.

"It can sting, but I wouldn't go as far as to say it hurts," Ghows said. "We generally suggest elbows pads or arm pads, just for the forearm as well as knee pads because in the sport there is a lot of diving and sliding, so these reduce friction as well as increasing the chance of a paintball bouncing off."

Although paintball has a bad reputation, the players see it as a sport focused on teamwork and constant communication.

"It's like chess with guns. Paintball is all about making the right movements at the right time and that is what chess is all about," Bowers said.

"It's a sport where pretty much anything can happen, and you don't expect it to happen," Ghows added.

Contact Margo Consul at mconsul@scu.edu or (408) 551-1918.