What Makes For A Good Tournament?

The team, Dirk, son and grandson!*

Fred sent along a pic of Team Toxic Teddys, who, despite low scores in most games, managed to hold Dynasty Old School to just 16 points in their matchup.  Fred had this to say:

"They were made up of a bunch of players that was put together by a friend of mine Jacob Easter of the podcast "Teddy Talks". It had guys like the great Peng from S. Cal. Jeff Thompson came all the way from Canada to play with this great group guys. This is paintball at it's best."

There are others, some of whom we're waiting to hear back on permission to quote them (cause that's how we roll).  Suffice to say that this is the beginning of sharing with you the impressions that participants at WCPL events have of their experience.  There's no greater satisfaction for those who run events to hear back from everyone - winners and losers - that they had a good, if not great time.

Which brings me to this:

A lot of players out there, particularly on social media, seem to focus primarily on team size and/or the presence of certain companies and individuals when judging their likelihood of attending a particular event.

I'd like to suggest that while those are legitimate factors in selecting a tournament, it is NOT the primary one.

I believe that the main assessment of whether your team ought to attend an event should be based on two things and two things only:  is it a well-run, well-officiated event with costs appropriate to the experience and ARE PLAYERS HAVING FUN?

Most of us have been there:  an event you deem important to your team's performance, reputation, standing, ends up being a flawed experience owing to one or multiple factors - bad weather, inconsistent reffing, broken game scheduling, lousy fields, poor performance.  Then you look at how much you spent and you have to ask yourself what the heck you are doing with your time.  You got how few minutes of playing time for that much?

Chances are good that you knew what that event was going to be like well before you paid the entry.

On the other hand, if you listen to your fellow players and they are all telling you that DESPITE on-field performance, they had a great time at an event that had relatively few teams, little industry presence and didn't charge all that much, well, maybe you are judging events on the wrong criteria.

Glenn Forster, owner of Ambush Paintball, where the Southern California Classic was held, sent along some video of the event, courtesy of Baccipaintball:

Dynasty vs So Cal Ironmen

and

From Toxic Teddys Paintball Team, more video of the Final game

We'll be bringing you more impressions of the event as we receive them.

(Our opening image is of the California sunset following the event, taken by Fred Schultz)

*Thanks to eagle-eyed viewers for bringing some errors to my attention.  They have now been corrected.  Apologies to Dirk for the incorrect post.