Getting into the Game - An Introduction to Paintball

Paintball is a highly active and addictive sport that many individuals are becoming more and more involved with. Unlike many other sports where being tall as an oak or strong as an ox gives you a huge advantage, in paintball the playing field is much more evenly spread. While the most common courses are outside, there are also inside paintball courses, as well. In a game of paintball, there are almost always two teams that are evenly divided. Each player gets a paint gun and then the two teams play-often the old childhood game of capture the flag is a perfect scenario for a game of paintball.

Getting into the Game - An Introduction to Paintball

Avoid tunnel vision. It is so easy to get focused on what's straight ahead that many beginning players get shot from the side without even realizing they're getting flanked.

Paintball is a great sport, and highly addictive. Learn the basics, and then go out and enjoy yourself. That's the most important aspect of a paintball game!

Beyond that obvious safety tip, here are several helpful tips that you should know before you go to a paintball game for the first time:

Wear some type of comfortable footwear. Preferably boot or comfortable shoes, something that you don't mind wearing in the woods.

Getting into the Game - An Introduction to Paintball

Good sportsmanship: always be honest. If you get splat and the ref doesn't see, raise your hand for all to see and walk off. This is a sport where players are very open to newbies, but also very competitive: and they don't like cheaters.

Getting into the Game - An Introduction to Paintball

The game of paintball itself is simple. Your team needs to guard your flag while trying to capture your opponent's flag. Instead of tagging each other, you shoot with the paintball guns. If you are hit with a paintball and it breaks, then you are eliminated. There will be referees to call you as at or still in. The paintball does have to splat. If it hits you and doesn't break for whatever reason, you're still in the game. The paintballs are approximately marble sized with a hard shell on the outside and soft paint in the middle (think of how M&Ms are advertised). The outside shell allows the paint to travel much longer distances, which allows for a much more enjoyable and challenging game. Most players will get hit a few times in a day. While there is a slight sting that might cause a minor red mark, the paint balls really do not hurt and are far, FAR safer and less painful than getting hit by a bb or pellet gun. Paintball gives the excitement of a combat game without any of the danger.

nerd getting shot by airsofts

this is me really getting hit i have welts real

Author: kingthing85
Keywords: airsoft gun welts nerd
Added: October 4, 2008

Roller Derby, Austin Style

Volunteerism and inclusion are two of the philosophical and practical pillars of the success of this Austin-born movement. The women risk bodily injury for the thrill of extreme sport and the glory of winning; they don't get paid. Proceeds go to local charities and to the expense of running the league. Texas Rollergirls, in particular, are fiercely committed to their slogan, a league for the skaters, by the skaters.

The sport has been hugely successful in Austin as both local leagues constantly draw sell-out crowds. Enthusiasts swill ice-cold cans of Lone Star and local bands fill the arena with loud, raucous Austin rock and roll. Fans of the flat track version of the sport love to sit in the first two or three rows where the chances are likely that they'll become part of the painful action when some blocker or jammer gets knocked off the track-there are no rails or barriers-and goes sailing into someone's lap.

Elbows fly, legs lock, bodies go careening and sliding along the masonite track. Occasionally two shapely lovelies go at each other, swinging hard and fast, falling to the ground, rolling and grappling as the beer-soaked, capacity crowd roars in approval. It's Sunday afternoon at the roller derby bout; roller derby with a Texas twist.

Both leagues boast an independent, tough-girl spirit and are proud of the way their movement grew from their own sweat and muscle to grow within a few short years into a national phenomenon as all-girl roller derby leagues have sprouted up all over the country. Several documentary films and one reality-style national TV show have helped propel the popularity of this fast-paced, contact sport for women. The leagues in different cities have begun to hold inter-city and inter-state competitions and a national tournament as well.

Roller Derby, Austin Style

Austin, the city that likes to keep itself weird, has given birth to yet another entertainment craze that has gone national. All-girl roller derby, loosely fashioned after the co-ed roller derby teams of yesteryear, took root here in 2001 with the founding of the TXRD Lonestar Rollergirls. A couple of years later, most of the teams in the league spun off to form a second league, Texas Rollergirls, due to a difference of opinion about how the original league was managing things. In addition, the Texas Rollergirls play on a flat track, rather than the traditional banked track that the Lonestar Rollergirls prefer.

Rough and tumble roller girls with names like Raquel Welts, Misty Meaner and Lucille Brawl plaster and pummel each other all through the four 20-minute periods of the game. By day, they are moms, special ed teachers, maternity nurses and art school graduates. On the track though, they assume their alter egos and put on a show that one of them, Melissa Joulwan (Melicious), describes in her book, Rollergirl: Totally True Tales from the Track, as a "dazzling carnival on wheels"a sport of speed-skating and brutal body checks, played out against a backdrop of head banging rock. The spectacle drives fans into a hormone-and-beer induced frenzy.

AE channel produced a 13-episode television program in 2005 called Rollergirls that was about the TXRD league, their skating and scrapping escapades, and their life off the rink with boyfriends and bosses. The website for the show describes the sport as raucous bouts that combine fierce competition with jaw-dropping outfits and crowd-pleasing personalities.

Ten women go whizzing past wearing wild fishnet hoses. Their colorful get-ups also include helmets and kneepads and flying scarves and the skates on which they are racing around the oval track.