After leaving World Cup with a lot of mixed feelings I was on a plane back to Taiwan for a day in the office before a trip to the land down under. World Cup was a great event and I am glad I was a part of it. Arriving in Australia is always questionable but after a few trips already under my belt I did not take my own loader, barrels, air tank or marker. The laws on bringing in those items require you to have permits and it can take a few weeks to get. If only i had known that the airport was a mess because of strikes I could of walked into the country with all my own gear.
I picked up my rental car and headed from the Melbourne Airport to Semoz Paintball in Echuca-Moama to meet up with Peter Spencer who is the field owner and Mike Paxson who arrived the day before me. As I arrived Mike was doing a Clinic for a few players. Pete had just finished updating his tournament fields with a full size PSP field on astroturf, brand spanking new Dye Field, Scoreboard and netting. The field looked mint and I was excited to play the event. As I was checking out the new field and watching Mike do the clinic I headed over to do a tech class for a few people.
After I was done with the Tech class Todd and Davey had shown up and we hung around with Pete over a few Bundies (Australian pre mixed Rum & Cola which are fantastic). The night was good and relaxing as Pete and his wife Kylie had a great roast dinner for us all with some of his Moms homemade sauce. He was making sure we were all ready for the 2 days ahead.
The event started off bright and early at 8am…. Well it was supposed to but (I will included myself in this) by the time everyone was ready to go it was about 10am. It gave us all time to make sure that the field rental guns Pete was letting us all use were good to go. Might I add that he runs DMs and NT markers with Rotors as an upgraded field rental package so we had good working guns and fresh Dye CG Paint, everything was good to go.
I have had the chance to test the Dye paint here in Taiwan on multiple occasions and this was the first time i would shoot the paint in another country. I was excited for everyone else there to see what I have been talking about for the past weeks. Not a single person was disappointed in the quality of the paint!! It was shooting ball on ball accurate and was breaking on everything but inside of the markers.
The time had come for games to begin and team USA Allstars (which we later changed to Team Bundy) was out to have fun and play against the local Australian teams. The team was made up of Mike Paxson, myself, Davey Williamson, Todd martinez and Matt Baulch. Matt is a local Australian player who was our fifth player and he held up his share during the event. There were a total of 9 prelim race to 2 matches with teams playing everyone from both divisions. So the new teams had their chance to play the experienced teams and vice versa. I really am a fan of this type of play in small local events because of the opportunity it gives to the newer teams. Games went on all day Saturday leaving each team 2 prelim games to play on Sunday. This was also something I thought was a good idea just by the simple fact that all of the teams will be there both days. Instead of having a team who does not advance into the next round of play and misses the final day of the event.
As the games moved onto the finals they were played in a round robin format so each team would play each other. The only difference between the prelim and the finals is that all of the final games were played as a Race to 3. The finals would allow all of the lower division teams to play all of their games so that when the high division teams were playing they had a chance to watch instead of getting ready for their next game. I have a strong feeling that the lower division teams appreciated this as they were able to get a better grasp on playing as a team and trying different things on the field.
After the games finished there was a BBQ for everyone to hang out, have a few drinks and tell war stories from the weekend. All of the players had a smile on their faces or were laughing from something that happened over the weekend.
There was the awards ceremony but before that began prizes were given out for the MVP in both divisions and some product was thrown out to the crowd courtesy of Pro Paintball Shop Australia.
I had a great time over the weekend and owed a big thanks to the people who helped make it happen. Peter Spencer for having the event at his paintball park, Bones and the rest of the APA and Dye Paintball for not only supporting the event but also making it possible for me to be there.
Devon Stutz
