Brian Barno of ProCaps Direct

The Opinions Expressed here are the sole opinion of Dale Ford and don’t necessarily reflect the views and opinions of The Ford Report or its’ advertisers.  While Brian Barno may be mildly annoyed by this editorial, he was in no way harmed.

I often get accused of using my vocabulary too much. Why make a statement with a short phrase when an obscure word does the job and makes me look smart?

For instance, the phrase “Paradigm Shift”. It’s one of those really cool sounding phrases, but the reality is that all you’re saying when you say “Paradigm Shift” is that the way things have been done in the past are no more…things are done differently now. When I moved to Florida 7 years ago, being a tournament player with ‘sponsors’ was THE thing to aspire to.

Gallivanting around the freshly invented ‘concept fields’ was the wave of the future, how paintball was going to be done from now on. A certain down-the-nose attitude to the poor sods still playing in the woods was part and parcel of this attitude. Get rid of camo! Call ‘em ‘markers’, not ‘guns’!

Back then paintball was a sport destined for the Olympics. In our short history we were going to climb the fabled mountain of legitimacy by becoming recognized by the Olympic Committee. I admired guys like “Spud”, Rocky Cagnoni, Ed Poorman and the rest of the rock stars on Avalanche. Dynasty was a bunch of kids from California that everyone was trying to figure out. I’m guessing that nobody has figured them out yet, either. Not partying like a madman the night before a major event? What?

Here in The Year of Our Lord 2010, things are quite a bit different than they were just that short 7 years ago. ProCaps, the tournament player’s company for all things tournament related, now has reality based people like Brian Barno in leadership positions, and relative newcomers like Andy Potter are focusing not on the the young superstar raising hell on the tournament field, but the middle aged field owner who has hundreds of players cycling through his field every weekend, and 95+% of the players out there have no idea whatsoever who Chris Lasoya, Rocky Cagnoni, Frank Connell or Ollie Lang are, nor do they care.

An entire generation of players now know Rocky Cagnoni as the really cool guy who works for DYE, rather than the Rocky Cagnoni who was one of the best players in the world, on one of the most powerful teams in the world. It’s not fair to Rocky, because in a very real sense he’s still one of the best players in the world. Just because you get a little older and slow down a bit doesn’t mean that you lose skills and experience.

Media Rock Star Mike Phillips

7 years ago I had just made the grueling 2 day trip in a U-Haul truck with friends to live the dream in Florida. I met this guy with a thick coastal Georgia accent who very politely asked me to come up and check out his little field. Today that guy, Billy Smith, has transformed that little field into one of the ‘must play’ venues for serious scenario/woodsball players, and he owns the SPPL, the league created to bring competitive paintball back to the woods, where it began. All but ignored 7 years ago, now Billy Smith, along with people like Bill Murray, Joe Holleran, “Georgia” Joe Hamilton, John Navarro and Mike Phillips are the new rock stars of paintball at the grassroots level and in the paintball media, which until recently was an oxymoron.

I was on the phone yesterday with a friend, who back in the 90′s played on one of the top teams in Florida. Even today in his 40′s, he’s an amazing player, but he’s done with the tournament lifestyle. I came as a shock to me listening to him ponder how to mount a flashlight to his top-of-the-line tournament gun so that he could be more effective at night in the woods. A big debate within our 16 player strong scenario team right now is whether to start wearing mil-sim inspired clothing, or to stick with our jerseys, made by a famous jersey maker. The funny thing is, the tournament style jerseys are still in woodland camo, but with some really nice graphics and sponsor logos.

RPS and NPS, two major powerhouse acronyms, have merged into one acronym, KEE Action Sports, and hardcore tournament players and ace sales people like Paul Bollenbach are now spending time at scenario games and listening to what players think of the latest camo pattern.

A lot of the industry insiders think that I dislike Paul, and vice-versa. I can’t say how Paul feels about me, since we don’t really talk a whole lot, but here and now I can say that I admire him and what he’s done with KEE.   He was one of the first to see the trending away from tournament style/airball back to the woods where one weekend you might be a Stormtrooper chasing after a princess, and the next weekend you and Paul might be on the field as a soldier fighting against the Axis powers in France during World War II.

The way things have been done in the past is changing, and I’m going to refrain from shouting “I TOLD YOU SO” from the nearest mountain. With the tech, housing, and internet bubbles now burst, reality has sunk in to a lot of us. There is a significant number of players now who are too old and too intolerant of BS to put up with the tournament world anymore, and they’re going back to the woods and playing as medieval knights, killer rabbits or even a video game character, and both ‘worlds’ of paintball are forever changed.

Today, as it always has been, the majority of players out there are out in their back yards, at a local field , or out in the woods playing a scenario game for the fun of it. While ‘living the dream’ as the next Ollie Lang or Frank Connell is still in the hearts of some, the vast majority of guys out there are looking forward to the next outing at their local field where they play attack and defend, or the next scenario/big game where they get to put on their ghillie suits and around the forest in their jerseys looking for someone to shoot at. While it’s very gratifying to now see our industry understanding the importance of the ‘for fun’ player, I fear it may be too little, too late.