12/13/03    Okay, so its been a while since I’ve gone off about something.   Personally, I’m going to start out by saying that I think the sport is doing ‘O.K.’    It’s obtained pretty much international acceptance and I feel like we are safely past any real threat of extinction.    But as usual, there are still things that bother me.    And as always they seem to fall in the realm of ‘speedball’ With these ‘new’ field formats.    X-ball, Sup-air-ball, whatever the flavor of the month happens to be called.    I’m seeing a whole lot of something I don’t like to see at all.   Bunker shots.    I seem to recall a time when it was considered a ‘no no’ to shoot someone who was less than 10 feet away from you.    In fact it was the rule at most fields.    Nowadays, if you don’t jam your barrel into their ribcage it wasn’t really an elimination.    I was flipping through the pages of a new and really popular paintball rag today, just really to see what they offered.    A lot of tourney coverage.   And TONS of photos.   Nicely done.    But a huge percentage of the photos where bunker shots.    One player blasting another at ranges less than three feet.    Seriously not good.    I think the sport needs to evaluate the wisdom of this.   Sure we are making big moves forward in the effectiveness of the safety gear we are wearing now.    But are we taking a look at the safety aspects of the way we are playing?    We’ve got guns out there now that can rip out 30 balls per second in the hands of players who lack the skill and the judgment to know when to or not to use this ability.    Now we have fields that are set up so that far too much of the action takes place at arms length.    I feel the time has come to stop and think.    We aren’t likely to see a change in the field format to prevent ‘bunkering’ and I doubt very seriously we can get fields that provide speedball format fields to start enforcing an even stricter standard for safety equipment.    I think at best we should evaluate marker velocity.   Do we need 285+ feet per second at 3 feet range.    NO.    Even 250 fps would seem a bit on the overkill side.    How about 230?    Back players certainly won’t like this but maybe time has come for a change?    I put it like this.    Pro players probably don’t need a velocity restriction.    They have the skills to put their shots onto a safe location on their target and to limit the tendency to overshoot.   There are a few ‘pros’ that are exceptions to this in my opinion, but that is another rant.   But if they are going to consider themselves ‘pros’ then they need to behave as such.    In other words remember that eyes are on them.    Their behavior is mimicked by novices worldwide.    Novices who do not have the judgment skills that the pro player has learned.    And in the same vain the pro needs to exhibit excellent judgment at all times when in the public eye.    There have been some pretty ugly examples in recent history of pro players showing very poor judgment on the field.    Until we see the leap in technology that will allow our equipment to unfailingly operate at peak performance in all playing situations we will need to take the steps on our own.    Someday maybe we will have ‘smart’ paintball guns that dial their velocity and rate of fire according to the distance to the target, and safety equipment that can handle the punishment of close play.    But until then, it is we, the players who are as always ultimately responsible. Okay, I got it out of my system.    My .02 scarecrow