Hey everyone,

I noticed a bunch of things from this last practice that I wanted to go over:

The Great

Setting up the field

Everyone chipped in and we set up and tore down the field super fast. Nobody was goofing off and it made me very proud to see everyone working together.

The 5 man guys

You guys did excellent. You listened well to Lou and me, if we pointed out mistakes you tried to fix them, you worked on talking more etc. Good work

The Good

Drilling

Everyone bought into the drills we were doing and people just wanted to keep playing and get back out there. There was a little bit of goofing around but that was fine.

The Bad

Codes

I realized that some people (e.g. Nick2) don't know the codes. These are people who have been playing with the club for YEARS and it's frankly unacceptable.

Communication

This is the same as the codes above. People with years of playing time are not talking as much as they should.

Managing Zones

X Ball corners and backs: it is your job to manage the zones. Lou was getting in the snake and killing three people in one game. How are we supposed to win games if you can't stop ONE guy. I also saw Asian Dave and Ryan run right into bunkers that were getting lanes because they didn't know the zones. You guys need to learn this

The Ugly

The will to win

At one point, the X Ball line had lost 50% of the time against the 5 man guys. This was already pretty bad but when I pointed this out, the response was "Well, it's 4 on 5" and people were joking around. That is RIDICULOUS. First of all, it's bad enough that a line made up of people who have played in multiple nationals and played together for two years was getting rolled by a bunch of 5 man guys who have never played together. Then to be like "Whatev", what are you guys doing here if that's the attitude? When you step on the field you need to want to destroy the other side EVERY SINGLE TIME. Saying things like "well it's 4 on 5" is an excuse, especially since they were still beating you 5 v 5.

We will start winning games when people get rid of the excuses. For those of you who don't know what the excuses are:

-It's too expensive. Answer: get a job. Nick2 got a job without even applying
-My gun doesn't work. Answer: Learn how to fix it and make it work BEFORE you get to practice
-We're the newest team Answer: Guess what, Army is the newest team and they stomped us
-We don't have psp players Answer: Maryland doesn't either and they stomped us
-I don't have time to get a job Answer: Right. Tell that to someone else while you are playing XBox. Assuming it's true, then come up with a fundraising idea

Starting to get it?

Comments are appreciated.

Hey everyone,

I thought a lot about this recap and I talked with a lot of of people both in the club, people I know who play paintball and even my family and here is what I came up with.

First, I am going to talk about how the other teams took us down:

ARMY

Here are Army's strengths:

1. They just keep pushing, pushing, pushing.
2. If there is an opening they go. Mostly because of #1.
3. If a guy goes down they all adjust instantly

We had problems from our side on three above. At times during this game we looked like we were playing 5 man. People weren't talking, people were ignoring my signals or not relaying etc and so on.

MARYLAND

Maryland's strengths:

1. They are really good at zoning
2. They are ok strategically. e.g. if they are getting beat a certain way they will adjust their game plan

Again, we had major problems with zoning and communication was not working well. While we did look better, we let them get too far up on points and then I think some people gave up.

UCONN

Yes, UConn is good. However, I agree with Lou that there were a bunch of people (you know who you are) who gave up. They didn't push as much, they weren't helping with coaching etc. There were some people who pushed non-stop and that's how we should play all the time.

OVERALL

Things we need to work on:

Talking/Communicating/Relaying

MULTIPLE times I saw people run right into the other teams zones and after the point I would say "Did you know there was a guy at <whatever> beofre you went?" and most of the time they would say "No" even though I had been throwing signals that the person was there, other people had relayed etc. This is just something we need to drill, drill, drill till people are sick of it.

Zoning

I would define this as building a wall of paint that the other team has to fight through to get to us. If we lose a guy and a hole opens up in the wall, we need to readjust INSTANTLY. We seem to zone up and when we lose people nothing happens. No zones change, people don't know the scarlet count changed etc.

Trusting each other

One of the key parts of playing paintball is that a lot of times you need to watch someone else's back while they watch yours because other wise you will both get shot in the neck. It's hard to do that if you don't trust the person who is supposed to be watching you. When I played it became second nature and I guess I just assumed that other people would pick this up. We are going to drill this big time too as it applies to every position on the field e.g.:

-the snake front needs to trust the snack corner to stop the run through
-the snake corner needs to trust the anchor to make sure the zones are right
-the d front needs to be able to trust the d corner to stop the move up the tape
-the d corner needs to trust the anchor to tell him what's going on snake side
-the coach needs to be able to trust the d side to stay alive while he moves the snake guy up
-the anchor needs to trust people to call themselves out, relay and tell him when they are reloading and the the kill count.

Get the picture?

Any other comments, feedback etc are appreciated