Team Tsunami

It all started the weekend before the event, where all the guys on the team ran a 21 kilometers race as part of our preparation. We’ve been doing this kind of test often in order to strength our selves both physically and mentally.

Must of us arrived to Medellin the day before the event, and we went at night to walk the field, we started to figure our game plans and lanes, then we went to have dinner where we discussed some other things, and we left it that way assuming that it was all good.

On Saturday we woke up really early because the kids that we train in Calipaintball (our home field) were playing one of the first matches of the day so we had to be on the field like at 7am helping them out, and also our first match was about 10:00 am, so we had some breakfast early to be ready at that time.

The match with our fellow team from Ecuador “Monosalvaje” got started a little later than what it was scheduled and it was the first match in the OPEN division, so we had no time to watch matches before, we just had to face them with the little information we had about them, knowing that some of their players came from playing PSP the weekend before, and that they had a pro player in their roster. It was really a tough match, one of the toughest we have faced this year, where we had lost just one match in the whole year, but this was the second one. We were getting killed on the snake side with some shots from the Dorito side that we hadn’t figured out at that moment, the field layout was full of blind spots that those guys knew how to use them, and we had no answer for that, so we ended up losing that match 2-1. Due to some delays on the schedule we didn’t play more games on Saturday.

We were really mad, and we stayed on the field a long time after the games were over, trying to figure out what happened in that match, and trying to fix our game plans in order to get things going for the rest of the event. We ended up discovering that we had to press the field harder off the break, in order to avoid getting trapped in the middle of the field, we took more advantage of our speed and played more aggressively.

Things started to get better on Sunday morning, we played another team from our home field, “Cartel” they really knew how to press hard down the field, and we were getting a little bit confused with their aggressive and surprising moves, I think they were the only team that used the little pins on the center. But we were able to handle the match and ended up wining it by 3-2.

The confidence level of the team started to rise, and we were coming back from the defeat from Saturday, we faced “DC Army” and beat them with a stunning 4-0, it was just one of those matches where everything works out with and we dominated. 

It all came to the last match with “Low Profile” we were just climbing up the hill in our playing level and forced them to play at our pace. We got 3 quick points and they tried to come back at the end, but it was to late so we ended up winning 3-1 

So “Monosalvaje” went straight to the finals, and we had to face “Cartel” in the semifinals stage, another match with our long time friends, but now they were our rivals and we had to play and win. We both know that it was already an honor for our home field Calipaintball that both of their teams were on the podium, but the best team needed to move on. We both played with gumption and showed the great talent that our city has, we ended up taking this victory. At the end we showed some sportsmanship and respect for our friends and we all went to congratulate each other for the great match that we played.

We where at the finals, facing again “Monosalvaje.” The match started and we won the first point, they won the second, those were really slow and closed points. So at the end we had 2 minutes to score and win the event, it was a tough job, because we took one of them on the break, and then we shoot another player almost at the same time. They were just locking down the field sitting in their back bunkers, trying to force an over time, we had to run them down, and we had to make a bunkering move by the Dorito side, almost simultaneously our snake player bunkered another player. It was all opened for the 3 players of the center, one of them took the flag, the other one bunkered the last player alive, and another one was giving coverage. So we hanged the flag with 4 players alive and 4 seconds left in the clock, all the referees went to check our players and almost for 40 seconds it was all silent, finally the point was valid and we ended up winning this match by a tight score 2-1. The crowd went crazy and we all started to celebrate in the middle of the field with our teammates, friends, pit crew, and the people who were extremely happy with our victory.

Nothing really beats that feeling, it´s the fourth time in a row we end up in first place this year. We are really thankful with Planet Eclipse, for being such a great company and producing the best guns, our GEO and EGO are working amazingly, we just love them. We would like to thank Marc Lancia for the support that he has given us as are Eclipse Rep. We would like to thank Calipaintball (our home field) because they give us not only a place to train, but also they make us feel like we are at home. And final but not least we would love to thank are second home field QuitoWoodsball for the support they have given us this year.

Tsunami Paintball Team Colombia / Ecuador