Your Starting Out Story

Tell us your starting out story.  Think back to the first time you played paintball…  What was it that got you hooked?  Did someone invite you to play?  Did you just try it on your own?  Was it a backyard game or at a field?  What got you into the game?

Alright, I'll bite.

The first time I played paintball was back when I was 13 years old. The local field had just dropped it's 18-and-over rule and my best friend was having a belated (spring) birthday and took 3 of us along with him. We were issued JT whipper masks with the soft-foam throat protectors that hung from the bottom of the mask by wire-ties, Tippmann Pro-Ams and 200 rounds a piece. We wound up being out there with 4 other guys, so we played several 4-on-4 games for the whole day. Now, you must remember that this was back in the "golden-age" that most of the older players refer to. There were no electro-pneumatic markers, no agitated hoppers, and fewer worries about non-merited law-suits. We played on a field that used old gutted farm houses, barns, school buses, trailers, etc for the main structures and pallets and 55gal drums as well as hand-dug fox-holes for the cover in between. We played all types of games. Everything from capture the flag to house-assaults, protect the president, find the sniper, etc. and from the moment the first round went past my head with that now very familiar buzzing sound, I was hooked.

The thing that has kept me in the sport is the adrenaline rush as well as the wonderfully painful feeling you get after a day's play. From that simple walk-on style rec game over 14 years ago, I have gone on to captain my University's NCPA team, Played on Amateur A and B NPPL Teams, teched and sold equipment on the retail end of the industry, and played with some of the best players of the time. Now, I play in the local tournament series and am looking to get into the CFOA series to expand my tournament play even more. If I could make a comfortable living in this sport, I would.

My first time was with a swedish exchange student.

Friends birthday, rented a gun, we all enjoyed. We all got guns and started playing.

my first time was when i pretended to be a swedish exchange student.

basicly it was me and my twin brothers b-day, we got 8 kids rounded up and
played for about 4 hours at a local field. i was hooked.

Played some ghetto woodsball at snowboard camp, all the guns were shooting hot, my mask fogged up constantly, my gun chopped, I loved it.

oreomann33 wrote: My first time was with a swedish exchange student.

 

Im not swedish...

Thought paintball was retarded and a border line dungeons and dragons geek thing to do. A coworker got me to go after bugging me for a while. Took a neck shot on the first day. Too stupid and ignorant to know better, fell in love and spent a small fortune on it.

My friend thought it was the  most retarded thing in the world and thought it was the biggest waste of money. Now he's the one who shoots the most.

My first time was 1987 when I was in the Army. Couple of guys had splatmasters (the old green plastic ones) and the rest used sling shots. We used the old Army dust goggles and played in one of the training areas at Fort Stewart.

I bought my son a Brass Eagle Stingray (that still works) in 1995 or so. He stuck with it so in 1999 we got a Model 98, then another, and another, and then an A-5, then an Ion, then a Tac-One, then a PM5, then another Automag, Emag, 68 special, SL68II, and man we have had a lot of paintball guns.