Opening Day

No, not Sawks-Yankees...that's not until Sunday. I'm talking about paintball--my friend Matt and I got out for our first outing of the year on Saturday. We stayed local to me this time, going to ECX, a small field about 20 minutes south of my house.

This field gets a mixed review from our first day of play. The field hasn't been open for very long in its latest incarnation, so I'm willing to give them a little slack, but they seemed pretty disorganized--there was quite a bit of down time in between games on the X-ball field. We played exclusively on the X-ball field--there had been quite a bit of rain for a couple of days before we got there, so the woodsball area was a muddy mess, and the smaller airball field only had half its obstacles inflated, probably so the ECX team could practice on it.

That was the biggest difference between this field and others I've played at. There, most of the other players were recreational players like us. Here, most of the other players on the X-ball field were members of the ECX factory team--semi-pros who eat rec ballers for breakfast. They did a very good job of keeping things even; Matt and I were split between two teams of tourney players, but we still felt a bit like target practice dummies, especially during the early rounds. It was really neat just to watch them play, though--I felt like I learned a lot about the strategy and flow of the game just being out on the field with players of that caliber. I'll definitely go back in a couple of weeks--if they can just cut down on the waiting time between games, this will be a great place to play.