Malaysian National Paintball League 2009

14th February every year is Valentines Day. For the first time I fall in love in all these years of living. No! I did not fall in love with another women but with a new sport- paintball.

14th and 15th February 2009 was the first leg of 2009 National Paintball League and I was part of it as a player in Division 4 (young gunners). Hahaha....young gunners really tickle me. At this age I am young again. Of course its a new experience for me. Most players are young except one or two including me.

My involvement in this sport all happens when I sent my application to join the Bloggers Paintball Tournament organised by Advertlets in January 2009. It was my first taste of that war game sports held at MAPAAC field at ASTAKA Ground Petaling Jaya, Selangor. During that Bloggers Paintball Tournament, I was grouped together with four other bloggers - Marcus, Evo, Din and Celine. It was a first time at the sport for us except for Marcus and Evo who both had played paintball a few times before. Me, Din and Celine are first timers playing.

On that day 17th January marks the formation of a new team YAKUZA, the name given by Marcus. From that day onward Team Yakuza did not look back and played ourselves to the finals and emerged as runners-up after losing to an experienced paintballerz, Alpha Marksman, who I found out to be army personnel with ranks as high as major. I and the other Yakuzas was not disheartened losing to them since we are civilians fighting against a team whose game is guns and warfield. However we learn a lot from Alpha Marksman, studying how they move in battle and I think I was the last man standing (Ooops..I was kneeling when being shot at the back) during that game.

The team: The initial YAKUZAs who played at the Bloggers Paintball Tournament.

( from left: Evo, Uncle Z, Marcus, Celine and Din)

The team with new member for the NPL, Josh from Advertlets. On left is Ashley from Blazers. Taken during the Bloggers Paintball Tournament. Seems there is signs showing that Josh will be joining us for NPL

Before the league, our team lost one player Celine who pulled out voluntarily. Therefore we have to recruit another player and Marcus and Evo worked hard looking for another member. In actual fact we need another three since a team can register 7 players. They manage to rope in Josh from Advertlets.We had a practice sessions a week before the NPL and fortunately we had some hands on practical sessions with Simon who will be playing in D3. During this training we receive valuable tips from Simon but due to first time practising I especially could master it properly.Skills needs time to be mastered. In sports he/she needs at least 6 weeks before he show any progress in training and there is a research that someone need about 10,000 hours of training to master a skill. Therefore we can,t make a champoin in just an overnight training. But that training session of us with Simon did provide us with some confidence to face other well organised teams in the NPL.Our first and second game on the day came out positively. We won both games but lost the third and fourth game.

With strings of unconvincing results after the first two wins, we were expecting the worse. We thought that Game Over for us in this first leg of the NPL. However we found out that we are ranked 13th out of the 28 teams participating which we did not expect withour barely one month team. It is indeed a great leap for us.So we made it into the sweet 16 quarter finals where winners in two out of three games will proceed to the sweet 8 before going into the finals. Unfortunately we lost both the first and second games to Infidels who in the end landed on the podium.Whats next for the YAKUZAs. We think we should keep the team. During discussion with Wong he did gave us a psychological motivation and I was impressed with what he said. "Don't destroy the forest because of one bad tree. Chop the tree and keep the forest". Its philosophical indeed.

The next event will be held at UTM, Skudai, Johor in March.Pre NPL day: We met at the venue and did the field walk in preparation for the competition. Together with us is Simon who gave us on-hands tips. In sports this field walk is important for the athlete to make his/her mental preparation. Visualisation and imagery is part of preparation.

However with all the tips, we still do make simple and silly mistakes maybe because of the adrenalin and excitement of being in the top paintball competition with less than a month of tasting paintball sport.

Making the break during the sweet 16 quarter final against Infidelz.

This is Din. He makes a good defence in the centre.

Its me taking aim. The adrenaline rush at this point is great hearing the pellets hitting the bunker. In this situation it teaches and train me to be mentally strong and brave enough to face the opponents. This is one benefit of playing paintball. I was in this situation years back at Kem Terendak during the coaches orientation program. Back them, we were ambushed by real Army Ranger using M16s and blanks. The situation is because it was about 4.00 a.m and we are in the dark. I did say to myself," Lucky I am not in the army".

The results of the first league HERE.

"We Play to Win. Fun Tags Along"