Monosalvaje in Chile

MONOSALVAJE’s trip to CSP CHILE

Monosalvaje an Eclipse sponsored team from Guayaquil, Ecuador that was founded on the year 2000. We have been competing in South American events since 2003 and this year we decided to play in the South American Paintball Circuit (CSP). Our first stop would be Santiago for the CSP Chile event on July 16-18.

It was -2 degrees and everybody from the team had 5 layers of clothes to withstand the cold. 5 layers that didn’t feel like enough since we live in a tropical city and therefore we are not used to the cold weather.

There were 7 of us who took the trip from Guayaquil: Edmundo Jordan, Andres Dassum, Juan Jose Moreno, Ruben Moreno, Juan Sebastian Bejarano, Andrew Baker and Alejandro Amador.
We knew that there would be some tough competition at the event specially considering that some teams were taking pro players to reinforce them.

The pro players that played in Chile were:

Team Country Pro-Player
Mercenarios Brazil Ryan Greenspan
Jungle Boyz Brazil Mikko Huttinen & Osvaldo
Evolution Ecuador Brandon Short & Scott Kemp

We had a competitive team but we knew that we needed an extra player to take the team to the next level. We thought Bobby Aviles would be that pro player we needed in our team to give it that extra skillset. We were lucky to have Bobby Aviles playing with us because not only is he an incredible player but also an incredible person. He helped our team immensely both emotionally and tactically and he was a big part of our result.

We started our games on saturday and we had to play against Evolution, Mercenarios Black, Madbox and Kamikaze during the prelims. We lost to Evolution in the first game of the day after some dubious ref calls but we were focused on the prize and came back to beat Mercenarios Black in a 4-0 game. The other 2 games had to be postponed for sunday since it was getting late and there wasnt enough sun light to play by late saturday. On sunday we had to play in extremely cold weather because we had the third game of the day but we quickly got warmed up after an intense game against Madbox, the home field team. We took down the third game 4-0 and we were left with one last game against Kamikaze. Whoever won the game would make it to the semifinals and we beat them 4-1.

The 4 teams that made it through to semifinals were: Evolution and Monosalvaje from Group A and Jungleboyz and Mercenarios from Group B. Evolution would face Monosalvaje and Jungleboyz had to play against Mercenarios.

Evolution got a 2-0 lead but Monosalvaje came back strong and with some minor adjustments in the breakout lanes and primary bunkers, we were able to turn the game around and got to a 2-2 score. The game time was over and we had to go to a final game, who ever won that game would take the match and the place in the finals.

We knew that Brandon Short and Scott Kemp who were playing with Evolution would not give up easily, but our lanes were impecable and after getting 2 Gs we pushed the field. Bobby went underneath the X and did a run through where he bunkered Scott and left Brandon Short by himself in the snake corner. Monosalvaje moved up the field to the X and other 50 line bunkers and took Brandon out. The game was over and Monosalvaje made it to the finals.

In the other semifinal Ryan Greenspan had some really good matches against Jungleboyz and helped Mercenarios get to the final. In the final, Mercenarios had a pretty good game plan and our lanes were not working as well as they had throughout the tournament. Ryan Greenspan was playing smart paintball and they beat us to take the first place.

We ended up with a second place which could have easily been a first if some things had gone different but we had no complaints, our team had played great and we were happy with our performance. We dedicated the second place to the memory of JUAN CARLOS HENAO, a great friend and mentor of the South American Paintball scene.

Now that the CSP Chile is in the past our next stop will be Buenos Aires for the CSP Argentina. Bobby will be playing with us again and hopefully this time we will take the first place home. Chile wasn’t our time to win but Argentina has our name written all over it!

Alejandro Amador
Monosalvaje’s Field Captain