Grin and Wear It !

With the 2011 season behind, and the brutal winter ahead of us, like most of Swedish population, everything began going into hibernation mode. With our brutal and unforgiving winters which lasts more than half a year, we had to pack our bags and prepare for a long and treacherous winter full of gingerbread cookies and delightful winter treats sending us up into the next weight class and our more forgiving clothes: the sweatpants.

After having our psyches pushed to the limit and having spent ungodly amount of hours in our therapeutic so called “light rooms,” the internet forums starting coming alive with news of the first outdoor tournament for the 2012 season had been announced. Grin signed up immediately.

We knew that some teams had been keeping up a brutal training regime during the off season, so we, with our mere two team practice sessions 3 weeks before the tournament, felt that we the odds were heavily stacked against us.

A few days before the big day, we were asked to do a day of reffing the day before we were scheduled to pay. 4 of our 6 volunteered to take part in what we all really know what reffing actually is: high speed dodgeball where you're always losing. After a full day of reffing the Open and D3 games, our 4 were tired, sore, beat up, and ready to tear off some heads and show how the good old boys do it! Or so we thought.

Even with our collective and individual competitive paintball experience, there were still a few of us who were nervous about our first game of the tournament, and the season. As most of you know, the first point can set the mood for the entire tournament, and in turn, change the outcome of everything from that point on.

And to say that we were nervous is quite an understatement. No amount of laxatives could compete with what our bodies were doing to our bodies naturally when we saw our young, well versed, athletic competition that we would be facing all day.

With our first match, we were playing a lot of individual paintball, the communication on the field was sporadic, and everyone seemed to be pretty scattered in their game style along with their mentality. The common symptoms of team which hasn't practiced for a long time.

However, all of this began to fade away quite rapidly, and everybody started to clearly see where they were needed, and what they needed to do. And most importantly, it was the team that was going to win the points, not the individual player. We took the match with 4-2.

Second game we were a bit more nervous about the team were about to battle with: sMASHers. This team is an excellent team, and most definitely our biggest challenge in the preliminary pool. The tension was high amongst everyone in the team, which made us focus a lot on the field and also in the pit, preparing and visualising every kill and point were going to fight for. The second we stepped on the field, we knew what to do and how to do it. We took the game with 4-2, and we were highly praised for the achievement.

After lunch, we had our third game to look forward to, and after you've just slain the biggest dragon in the valley, you can get a bit cocky, and lose your focus, something which were afraid would happen, but we kept our heads cool and pulled off a 4-1 win.

With our 3 wins in the preliminaries, we secured our spot in the semi-finals (there was no quarter finals due to time and pool size), and had to go head-to-head against our Norwegian neighbours Trondheim Dominators, which proved to be a solid team which we really had to fight for our points. At first they gave us a proper beating, however, when they were going to hang the flag, their player had a poorly chrono'd gun, which lead to a re-hang, which showed that their entire team was using hot guns (up to 320fps). With this luck, we were able to turn the game around and won the match with 4-2.

This win now put us into the final for first and second place.........................

None of us had imagined being here at this point, it was all a surreal experience consider the circumstances of it all. We were all euphoric and ecstatic to be where we were!

In order to get the first place win, we had to win against Lowlife. At this point, all nervousness had evaporated and all it left behind was a well oiled, confident psychotic murdering machine, hungry to take home the win! Everybody was aware what was at stake, and what would take to win this match. We  won the match with an amazing 3 point lead: 4-1.

Once we heard the ref call out that our player was clean and we won the tournament, the final buzzer was the sweetest sounds we've heard! We all began overdosing on the endorphins we had flowing through our bodies and started cheering like no other.

And of course, with the support that you, Eclipse, have given us, helped us out a great deal. We were shooting both Ego 11 and Geo 2, all of which performed flawlessly and allowed us to focus our games instead putting time and energy into irritating tinkering. Thank you again, we hope to make you proud and show off your excellent equipment for the rest of this 2012 season.

                                                         See you at the fifty!

Thanks to http://bullitproofmonkey.com/ for the Pics !!