Preamble
In June of 2022 we wanted to find a way to get two days of practice into a weekend.
As true believers of #SupportLocal and you'll find that the brands we tend to work with are based down here in the south of the U.K. too. With that, we're lucky to have Paintball South as a local venue that also happen to have a speedball field that they are willing to let us take over for full weekends at a time.
So we booked a weekend, reached out to our friends and pulled together a structured practice in our style. What happened, was it turned out to be something other southerners fancied taking part in, with 13 players from other organisations joining the wider ICON club over the weekend to see 21 players grace the field.
We made an attempt to open up a practice in October of 2022, but it seems that length and weight of the 2022 season took its toll on everyone. the numbers just weren't there to make it viable.
Spring Cleaning
Cut to 2023, the days are starting to get longer, brighter, drier (at the time of posting... its rained for 3 days solid and we had snow one morning)... and it's time to look towards this years paintball season. A date was set with the team and the site, and instead of approaching players individually, a social media campaign was set up and over the course of 6 weeks players started booking in.
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Social media posters
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Fantastically, friends of the team pulled together a brilliant collection of giveaway prizes. Virst, Woodland Masters, Tea & Biscuits, One41, Nick Truter all helped out in one way or another.
This year we saw 16 outsiders join us making up 25 in total over the weekend, with three of last years visitors being brought into the club over the off season a 19% growth in practice attendance. With some players driving up to 2 hours to attend, it's a very surreal feeling starting to dictate stretches and warm-ups to such a variety of players... all of which have put their weekend in your hands.
Saturday
Paintball consists of a finite number of specific movements.. which, combined with any given field layout, allow for an almost infinite combination of things to happen during a game.
Given that we can't practice an infinite amount of different situations, the weekend was split into the component parts that we can safely practice with the numbers and location we are using.
So we took to the field, pen and card in hand. spent some time drawing out the layout, imagining moves, lanes and potential breakouts... finding inconsistencies and then gathering together to discuss our findings.
We then went ahead and ran through our warm-up, ready to step into a game of Simon Says. Which, after a few early players were eliminated... descended fairly rapidly into full chaos as two lines of players opened fire on one another... missing the crucial "Simon says" 🤣
Snap shooting and gun-fighting then was the topic of the day, with focus being made on form and consistency. This (in my opinion) is the major place that you can improve survival whilst adding in opportunities to get lucky eliminations and open up a potentially stagnating match up. We saw players go from not even attempting to use their off hand, go to consistently being able to make the correct motions. Alongside players who were simply working on improving consistency and repeatability of their motions.
We progressed to some gun-fighting drills where players would take turns against our "house robots". Using their new snap-shooting skills earn themselves an opportunity to move up the field.
The day was rounded out with some smaller (up to 4v4) games.
Sunday
Saturday was the more well attended day of the weekend, with the majority of players choosing to attend that day (perhaps this says something about when we can run events too?).
So Sunday became the reward, full weekend players and ICON teammates who were taking part went through a warm-up, followed by plenty of breakout drills.
We then looked at situational paintball, with players being placed like chess pieces by a team leader and having to figure out the situation in a game situation.
We finished the day with more games, and announcing the weekends "MOFO".
Virst have supported this practice last year, and again this practice by awarding a most focused player with a box of paint. David had initially planned to visit just on the Saturday, but rushed through his Sunday jobs to be back on the field at lunch time, putting into action all of the things we worked on the day before.
That's it
So all there is left to say is a big thank you to all the players that attended, the site for letting us go there, and all the support everyone gives the team. We hope people had a lot of fun and learn't some things.
Some figures for the nerds:
25 players over 2 days.
Over 60,000 paintballs shot.
8 prize packages given out.
6 weeks of buildup.
We also gave away some player cards in the prize packages, and a few for spot actions over the weekend.
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