National Guard provides free day of paintball

Monday, October 29, 2007

FRANKLIN COUNTY — All 296 KU students participating in the free National Guard Paintball Tournament Saturday weaved through and hid behind the same blow-up rubber obstacles. They ran around the same grassy area. They held the same black paintball gun with a case of marble-sized orange paintballs on top.

But they didn’t all think of paintball in the same way. Paintball can be thought of as a serious sport, a way to train for military purposes or a fun activity.

Put Caleb Soden, Baldwin City sophomore, in the first group. He came to the tournament with a high school friend, Matt Kretzschmer, who goes to Baker University. They’d been playing paintball for the last five years.

Soden takes paintball seriously. Plenty of Americans would likely place paintball in the same category as ping pong and air hockey, but Soden has seen what makes paintball a real sport. One time he brought an athletic friend to the paintball fields.

“He said it gave him more physical activity than football,” Soden said. “You’ll wake up sore the next day.”

Soden and Kretzschmer also map out strategies when they play. The goal, they say, is to quickly move to the sides and then fire toward people in the middle. They also said paintball involved lots of communication.

That’s why the Army likes it.

Nancy White, Sergeant First Class for the Kansas Army National Guard, said the Army often used paintball for training. Communication and strategy, two ingredients necessary for good paintball, are also needed for army missions.

But White wanted to make sure people didn’t link them together too much. She said real-life missions aren’t all about shooting and that bullets are much more serious than paintballs.

For Brian Cordes, Lansing sophomore, and his aerospace engineering friends, paintball means something different from White and Soden. It’s about fun. Cordes had never even played paintball before Saturday.

“It was free paintball,” he said, “and I wanted to shoot something.”

His team, A.E. Thug Life, didn’t use any secret tactics. When they did something smart, it was by accident.

“I think we had strategy because we’re aerospace engineering students,” Cordes said, “and we’re nerds.”

— Edited by Rachael Gray

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