Finding That Edge

I have been thinking a lot lately on some of the small things a team could do in a tournement to gain tactical advantage over an oppenent. One huge advantage I think to a team would be familiarity with the field being played on. If we intend to compete in tournements, one big obstacle we will run up against, especially in the woods ball scenario is trying to coordinate and be effective on unfamiliar terrain. So, I've come up with a solution to the dilema. It doesn't really solve the problem entirely, but I think this system if practiced, and put into play by a team could give a team a big advantage that they would have normally gone without.



My idea is to mentally picture any field you come upon sectioned up into six sectors. You can see my illustration of what I mean below.









You don't get to play on a perfectly rectangular field usually, so I drew a randomely shaped field to show what the sectors might end up looking like typically. Sectors one and two would always be the nearest to your teams home base. In this case the blue box, represents the home base. You start on your left and begin numbering left to right.



I think using this, a team could arrive on a field they've never been on before, and still be able to somewhat communicate to each other more accurately of what's going on out there. Imagine your forward man or sniper is somewhere in sector three, and spots an enemy patrol moving in his direction from the other side. He can simply guestimate the sectors and give decenty accurate info over the radio of enemy movements without having to be expertly familiar with the terrain. As long as he's pretty sure of about where mid field is he will be pretty accurate. i.e. "Lima, Juliette I've got four bogies sector six moving slowly towards sector 5, copy?" Just one quick sentence, and the whole team can now visualize pretty clearly what he sees and react accordingly. This would be much better than, " Johnny this George. I can see like four guys. They're about one hundred hards to the front and right of me, and they're moving kinda diagonal across the field. Kinda by the middle."



I would like to give this a try. It will take some dedication and practice to get it down, but I think the advantage to learning this would be well worth it. In fact, If the team gets it down pretty good, then I would like to take it one step further by dividing each sector into quadrants. So you'd have Sector Two Alpha, or Sector five Bravo, etc, and be even more accurate while communicating on the radio.



It might be too much and too complicated to learn though. But, it might be worth a try. I know we use nicknames for a bunch of spots on the field we play on now, and it really works well to our advantage to call out on the radio, " Ambush at Arnold's trap!" Why give up that kind of advantage just cause you happen to be on the road?

Ch ch ch Changes. . .

Well, I am considering giving up on this blog in a sense. Not abandoning it entirely however. I think I am going to give up on my rather lame attempt at providing profound remarks on the latest news and current events. Once in a while something might enrage me to the point of posting something here, but I think for the most part I am going to leave that kind of political analysis to the pros. Instead I am going to start narrowing the range of topics on here. I would like to start focusing in and making this more of a blog centering on my paintballing. And since my performance on the field is directly affected by my own fitness level, I will most likely make some fitness comments as well.

There's kind of a reason for this sudden switch, and that is I am seriously considering putting together a real team and for the first time in my paintballing career competing on a competition level. i.e. tournements and the like, instead of just shooting it up with pals in the woods on the weekends. So let this post be the first in the beginning of my newly themed blog about my journey in pursuit of excellence in the competitive paintball world.

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As the season for outdoor paintball winds down I'm getting depressed. I didn't get to play as much as I wanted to this summer. Work schedules, and especially the weather did not work out. This spring was way too wet and cold to play, and the summer was DANG HOT! I enjoyed a few games this fall though, and made a new vow not to let the weather play such a factor in going out or not.

Ok so here's what I want to do. I want to put together a ten man team and compete hopefully next year in the SPPL. I've been glued to the web site ever since I discovered it, and the more I think about it the more I want to do it. This tourney has me written all over it!

First things first. I have to find ten to twelve guys willing to do this. It's going to take dedication, and commitment to do this, and I can't afford to have any last minute flakes on the team. So, selecting and putting together a team is going to be hard. I have about six guys now, they are:

Myself ( Lima )
Delta
Bravo
Juliet
Hotel
Alpha

For their privacy I've given them code names for the blog.

One major problem with this group is that Bravo and Delta both live four and three hours away respectively. And Juliet may be going off to med school. So, who knows how this will turn out. Gonna have to start keeping my eyes open for potential candidates to join the team. Not only do I need to get a team together, but I need to find a group of guys to practice with. Another team perhaps, or a group of recreational players that would be willing to help us practice. Basically be our tackling dummies. This isn't as easy as it may sound. To be a tackling dummy wouldn't be your typical day of playing paintball. Lots of stops and starts, and probably lots of getting hit. Being asked to do things you wouldn't normally do in a regular game. The most important thing at this point is to find a TEAM. . . no team no tourney.


Well, that's it for now. I will be on to update as time goes on.