The Wake

Splat!

The sound is music to the ears of paintball enthusiasts everywhere. It’s also a sound that can be heard around campus, if you listen closely enough. But that wasn’t the case until recently.

After playing paintball throughout high school and during his first year of college at St. Mary’s, John Thomason transferred to the University of Minnesota and was stunned to find no club team affiliated with the National Collegiate Paintball Association (NCPA), a league designed specifically for college students.

Thomason decided to take initiative and sought to launch a paintball club team. “Being that the U has such a large student body, I knew I could find enough people to get the club started,” he says.

The paintball club became recognized by the U of M last September and launched with six members; since that point, membership has grown to 20. Despite its relative youth, the club is currently ranked 12th in the nation by NCPA and placed second out of 26 teams in a late February tournament in Wisconsin.

Paintball breaks down into two categories; recreational woodsball and competitive speedball. The University team fits into the latter category, a fast-paced game played in a relatively small arena filled with bunkers. Getting into the sport at an advanced level such as this can be expensive (players on the team use guns, or “markers,” that run upwards of $700), but those who get into it take it very seriously and seem to enjoy it thoroughly.

“When I started my freshman year last semester, I had just about given up on paintball,” says Jordan Carlson, a team member who had been playing for about eight years. “Then my life was changed by finding out about the U of M team. After I found out, all I wanted to do was get on the team and play for the University of Minnesota.”

This is a very young squad still looking to make a name for itself. Currently, the paintball team is only recognized by the U of M as a “club” and not a “sports club;” it is an important distinction because the latter receives more school funding and access to facilities. They are on a one-year probation period toward becoming a sports club, and Carlson notes that they have made efforts to set up a table in Coffman Memorial Union to spread the word and recruit new members. Considering the rapid growth the team has experienced during its first six months of existence, it seems only a matter of time before the U of M can field one of the nation’s elite paintball squads.

Stories like this one and that of the Premier Dance Team, which I covered a few issues ago in this column, illustrate a very important and encouraging truth about attending a university as massive and well-populated as this one. If you have an interest or hobby in the field of athletics, there are almost certainly others who feel the same way. And if there isn’t already a club or team available, it isn’t too tough to get one started on your own.