Millennium Series 2012 – Round 4 – “World Cup”

Since we started this year, we had various activities and plans, of which one was running some charity events including a clinic with the one and only “Nicky T” from Planet Eclipse.

To make a long story very short – after the clinic we approached Nicky asking him what he thought about our performance and also discussed the issues we faced all year without a coach in our pits. Sharing the admin, pit and playing duties among each other just wasn’t ideal. After a few minutes and a question, if he would like to jump into the role of a coach for our last round of 2012, he agreed to the concept – once he had the “ok” from family and employer.

We were really super excited when he got back to us not even a week later with a “Green Light” from the lady of the house (thank you Bev!!!) and from the office.

The idea was to have Nicky with us for the Millennium weekend to evaluate our situation and also if we were ready for moving up a division in 2013. All these ideas & plans came to an early halt once we started discussing plans for 2013 amongst the team briefly during our last training prior the Paris event.

A very simple one:  the financial commitment – without any real financial support from any sponsors.

At the prices we were looking at paying and moving from a “RaceTo2” to “RaceTo4” with a 6 man squad just wasn’t realistic. We barely had a year of RaceTo2 experience at this point. In addition to this we had no dedicated coach or own tactical/strategic experience in how to coach and manage ourselves in an event – nor just a dedicated person in our pits to do so.

On a personal level it felt like a slap in the face, since I was hoping to be playing in Division 2 next year, however we all agreed in the end that one more year will help us to gel better on the field as a team and also give us some time to look for the 1-2 extra ingredients that will increase the size of our roster, to then hit the ground running joining Div 2 in 2014.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having spent most of the Thursday travelling and training, we used the Friday morning after a breakfast and some social time together to look at some games – however within the first hour the call for “MICKEY MOUSE “ got louder and louder amongst the ranks …

So, we took off to have some time with the attractions at Disney where finally one of our favourite hashtags was born … #creepyface.

Towards the end of the day two of us left the group to collect Nicky T at the airport, where he arrived on time from Manchester as expected. A quick debrief in the car on how the team was doing gave him a good idea of the situation and we agreed to have some dinner to discuss the next 2 days.

Dinner with Nicky was a godsend, he really put everything into perspective, and this wasn’t even essentially all paintball related, more between the lines of: “Enjoying what you do, when you do it – and when adding effort, dedication and committing to what you do (on as off the field) that there is almost nothing if not very little that cannot be achieved.” With these words of wisdom a last round of beers were ordered and it was time to head to the hotel shortly after (our games were not until after the lunch break so there was no rush to get to bed).

Looking at the weather forecast in the morning and hoping it won’t be true is something that we stopped doing after this years CPPS series in the UK … 4 rounds of “drenched and freezing” in every one of them … so we just accepted the fact that this Millennium Series WorldCup will be a wet and fun “slip and slide”. However, this all happened with a high motivation, big plans and dreams – we wanted to finish Top 10 by the end of the season, and this was only going to be possible if we made Sunday Club.

Nicky had called the weekend “Operation: Win Paris” and the smirk on everyone’s face was a thing of beauty when getting to the field, of course it was mixed with a bit of nervous laughter, but we had confidence that this round will not turn into another disaster due to some organisational “hick-ups” from the event management, which had us arriving late at fields because the schedule was running an hour early and nothing was said, or any other type hurdle we encountered in the 3 rounds before.

We were at our field 30 minutes prior to start, they let us in the pits 25 minutes prior and we started to set up our gear. Since it was cold and raining, we wanted to avoid getting the paint too early … but then suddenly it happened, us and Speed Tiger Lille (first game of the group) were the only 2 out of 6 teams in the pits and the referees decided to switch on a 5 min. timer with a call for “Gun Checks” – we just all looked at each other and panic kicked in. Two of us ran to the paint truck getting paint, two were setting up markers and the pit crew tried sorting out their tables with pots and cloths … once we arrived with the 6 boxes of paint we were down to the “2 min. warning”, Nicky took control of the situation by telling everyone to calm down and take whatever pots are ready, to distribute them among each other and get on the field.

Our last man arrived running at the gate at the 3 second mark and the game was over as quickly as it had started – people coming off the fields had frustration all over their faces, however the next point was going to start in 2 min., so no time for that – Nicky again reminded everyone to keep calm and get back out, unluckily this didn’t help since the heads were down and it felt like a messed up first game already – 2:0 was the outcome.

“Oh Well” – we thought to ourselves “Then we will have played our game and have all other teams be on “BYE/DRAW”” since there was nobody there besides us and they were in such a rush to get started … the next match timer was ticking down to 20 sec., then stopped and all the clocks went off. At this point the word “RAGE” does not describe the mood of the team – we as the team with the first group game – get hustled on the field without being ready and are PUNISHED for being there early?

The anger and frustration, plus the 30 min. break was all we needed to give us 3 consecutive wins of which all were very clear. So with a 3 wins and a clear high point score, we were through to Sunday already, with one more game Sunday morning in the prelims to ensure our top spot of the group and a potential “weaker” team in the first round of the knock-out stage.

Nicky looked very pleased with the outcome and we discussed some things on our way back. The excitement of the games and steamrolling teams had us totally ignore the insane downfalls of rain and muddy playing surface – a laundry run was needed.

We had a volunteer – no other than NICKY personally – where he enjoyed a 2 hour “downtime” with his kids on Skype and sitting in front of washing machines and dryers before he returned to us in the hotel room with 2 baskets of clean, dry and warm playing clothes … it felt like “Mom” was there with us. In return we did organize dinner and all had a quite dinner in the hotel room in fantastic company. Now how many of you can claim a Pro-Paintball players has done you laundry … huh??? J

When the alarm went off, it was still dark outside. First game of the day, knowing you have to wait until after lunch to continue playing is something we really have to get use to more – since at Race To 4 breaks between games are much longer than in our current division, where games literally are played in a very short time frame during the day.

Our first game of the day was set-up in flood lights on the Division 1 field – Astro Turf and no rain, which was exactly the same environment we played in on Thursday on our Pro field training session, so we felt very confident in playing – which resulted in a clear 2:0 win in a very structured and clear game for us.

With the moral and spirits high, we hunted down some warm beverages and breakfast to eat at the event, which was also accompanied by rain within the next hour. We knew it would be a wet afternoon with increasing rain – however we had to try keep dry. At some point we went back to our cars to warm up and dry a little before the “Sunday Club” games started.

By noon the knock-out stage had started and our first opponent was London Defiance 2. Their second team has just joined in the Millennium Series recently – however have immediate left an impression by making it to the 2^nd round of the tournament. Although we lost 2 players off the break, our Snake player, Mark, had the game of the day in our opinion winning an impressive 2 on 1. Him in snake 50, well aware of the positions of the 2 opposing players thanks to Scott’s coaching – he shot out the Dorito-side player and bunkered the Snake-side player, which spun around on him and even received a penalty for that action. This resulted in a automatic point for us and them starting their second point with 4 players. The rest is history, but we are looking forward to see them in 2013 competing again since during these events it is all about supporting “home teams” in all divisions.

Our next game would be against a very strong team named Furious Sneek. They had a flawless prelim record in this event with 5 out of 5 wins and were going to win all their knock-out stage games 2:0 until they reached the finals – where London Tigers 3 brought their streak to an end.

I was sideline coaching this game and after an very unlucky first point, we lost our entire Dorito side within 10 seconds and they loaded the Snake heavy, which resulted us getting squeezed out of our bunkers and us leaving the competition.

The heads were hanging when I arrived in the pits and one or the other had to stomp off to catch some fresh air before we spoke about what happened and where things could have been improved. It was a good learning – since we knew we had a serious chance in making it into the finals.

Nicky kept the moral up and complimented our performance – the pit crew was extraordinary, the team pulled themselves together after a rough start and came all this way in the first year? 9^thin Division 3 in your first year? Now THAT is NOTHING to be ashamed of at all. The team agreed.