Practice May 4, 2008...running some drills

I just got back from practice at All Star, and the team had had a small meeting to get confidence up and high hopes. It was exactly what was needed because practice was never this good. We ran some simple basic drill, nothing to special, but the way every team member went about it was just awesome to see. Every guy went out and just played with such tenacity and energy, it was very intense. These are the kind of practices we need if we want to win, and after today there is no doubt in ym mind that All Star Kidz can go out and win every event we play. Today was a great day for the team, every body showed up, we practiced hard, it was fun, its days like today that really make me love this sport. And honestly seeing the team practice like this, makes me really proud to be part of this organization. Our first event is right around the corner, in June, and as of now I think we all have high hopes and taking that podium and walking off with that first place win.

Practice on 4/28/08

The team practiced today at Allstar...we ran 4 man-40 second drills and 5 man-50 second drills. These drills are basically designed to train you and your teammates to move quick, think quick, find the bodies, eliminate the opposing the players, all as fast as possible. These drills went really well today, everyone started slow but as practiced progressed everyone picked it up and things started to look good. To be honest week by week the team is getting alot better and everyones confidence is going up which is exactly what we need right now, being a new team and entering a rough league. Right now the teams main concern isn't even practice, the team really needs to just pick up the intensity and start being more tenacious...I guess what I'm trying to say is everyone needs to have just a strong desire to wanna play this game. I'm sure it will click soon because practices have been going really well.

I think its about time I explain what X-Ball is...

X-Ball is considered to be the most popular form of paintball, its fast paced, high action, and also considered to be a blood sport. The format of xball is 2 teams play each other, each team has a 12 man roster, with any formation of lines. Lines is a combination of 5 guys from the roster to play a point, a point is 1 game against the other team. The idea is to win as many points as you can as fast you can because the games are time limited, you play 2 20 minute halves. At the end of the match the team with the most amount of points wins the match. During the games, the lines are being coached to help win that point. And even with a coach telling you everything you need to know it still takes alot to win that point, you always have to be on your game in order to win.

4/20 Practice

As I said before the team is looking to enter and play the GXPL, do well, and work our way to World Cup. We are on a high stakes road to World Cup, and right now the only way to get down that road is to practice, drill, and work hard. So practice was on 4/20 at All Star and we decided to do 1 x-ball line versus a young gun line and play a little 5 man. We played xball style, which meant ramping guns and fast paced movemtents to sweep the feild as quickly as possible. The day went extremely well, especially since my line basically beat up on the young guns crew. But its still to early to tell how we will do in the GXPL. As more and more practices go by only then will we be able to mark a point at where the team stands.

THE GXPL

The GXPl folks, The Global Xball Paintball League, its the newest Xball league in the nation right now, and it seems to be like it is going to be very popular, considering this year will be the first release of it. The team is doing everything it can to build up sponsors and raise money, save money, and gather money to enter the team and pay for everything to play these series of events. The theory behind us playing this league is that if we do well, we can see where the team is at in comparison to the teams that play nationally. The idea is if the team places top 5 in the first 5 events, our first national event will be the PSP World Cup, which is the worlds biggest and number 1 paintball venue and event. Over 300 teams play this event, not including the pros, and whoever wins World Cup is always considered to be the best team through out the world. Our goal as of now is pratice and train as hard and as much as we can to get prepared for the GXPL, do well and enter World Cup.

Top Gun Tourney April 12, 2008

It finally came, the teams first tournament, just a local one thats it. But alot of really good and strong local teams from all around N.J. showed up. The first line was composed of Matt, Joe, and Ryan and the second line was composed of Vinny, Justin, and Tom, the second line was a group of kids from the young guns team. The young guns unfortunately didn't do well because of lack communication and not being prepared enough for the competetion that layed against them. The other squad of Matt, Joe, and Ryan did extremely well. They went 8-1 in prelims only losing 1 game and went into the semi's in first place, during the semi's however things fell apart. I don;t know what it was bt they lost their groove and ending up taking 4th place over all. However this team is still very young and growing, so 4th was not that bad considering the circumstances. I have alot of confidence and faith in this team.

Sponsors

So as I've posted earlier the team has finally come to get a set roster, things are going well, and the team is looking relatively strong. However, in order to compete nationally, sucessfully atleast, a great team needs great sponsors. Paintball is not cheap and events are extremely expensive. Each event is 1500 dollars just to enter the event, then you need paint which is roughly about a 1000 dollars, hotels and food, thats another 600, and then theres team items such as jerseys, pants, etc. So a good estimate would be around 33oo dollars to compete per event. So far we have picked up 1 solid paint sponsor, Sterling Paintballs, but theres still alot that needs to be done. The team owner and captians are sending out the team resume to all major paintball companies. Hopefully we can find some good sponsors to support All Star Kidz this upcomming season.

Paintball Season Is Finally here

With the foundation of the team finally in place its time to start really preparing for the season. This year we have decided to play the GXPL, the Global X-Ball Paintball League. Its a local X ball league in the northeast and if things go well we are going to play the PSP World Cup which is the biggest paintball event and venue around. The team has finally fitted together a strong roster and we are not working on putting together the right combination of lines. The best way to do this is by practicing and drilling so thats basically going to be the plan for the next few weeks. Hopefully things will work out for the best.

The Next Step

O.K. so now that we have more then enough players, strong, dedicated players, and a young guns team it is time to start building our lines for X-Ball because the season is here. Just like football season and baseball season comes around so does paintball season. And well, its that time now. So with the x-ball team finally built its time to make our 5 man lines. Personally I feel we need 3 lines, line 1 should consist of Joe, Matt, Dave, Ryan, and Mike Papa, line 2 should be Tom, Vinny, Bobby, Marty, and myself, and finally line 3, the powerline, should be Dave, Papa, Marty, myself, and Bobby. But we will see what Joe and Dave want to.

Status

This post is to just update the status of the team. The team is doing well, really well in fact, everyone is really stepping up everyone is super dedicated to making podium at World Cup. We have been practicing almost every Sunday including alot of Tuesdays or Thursdays. So to say we could win consistently is an almost certainty. Hopefully we can keep this tempo going.
Other news, we have picked up some sponsors, not going to drop any names yet because its still a little early but I'll let everyone know who we got soon enough.

Paintball=Life

So I figured I would take a little time and explain why I love so much about paintball and explain why I have devoted my life to this sport. First of all I do want to stress that paintball is a sport, its the world's number 1 extreme sport.
I have been playing paintball since I was 8 years old, the first time I played it was in the woods and I was scared to death fo getting shot, however I did fall in love with paintball. I been playing ever since, its just the rush, its a drug, any serious player will tell you that it just sucks you in. Also any one can play there are no discriminations in this sport. I love this sport and I had decided to just stick with it, I have played all over the U.S. including Canada. I love paintball and I wanna play for as long as I can. Its taken over my life, but I don't care because I wouldn't trade my expereinces, freinds, and teammates for anything else. Paintball is my life

Birth of Young Guns

Now that the team has finally come together, a full roster of players, and now even more people wanting to tryout and play for A.S.K. it has been decided to start a young guns 5 man team. Things have been going pretty well, everyone on the team is starting to gel, everyone is also starting to really step up their game. Things in fact, having been going so well that we started a young guns team for everyone who is under the age of 18 and wants to be part of the All Star family. There are currently about 8 or 9 players on the kids team, and all are very talented. However only the future will tell about how talented they really are.

Impact

O.K. so as you already know, our first scrimmage ever with the Blunt Riders didn't go as we had hoped, infact it went so bad that w eonly won 2 out of 25 games. But also as you know we took our beatings and worked on our mistakes. Taking our new found knowledge we scrimmed a new team called Impact, they are a local team looking to compete at the same level as A.S.K. So the line up was me, vinny, tom, marty, and joe. An dour 5 rolled over Impact win all of our games and almost every game we won with every one still alive. So the team is starting to look better and growing stronger, but only time will tell how good we actually are.

Scrim

The team finally had its first scrimmage against a very talented GPL team called Blunt Riders, we practiced 5 man with an X-ball style, making it very fast and intense. The scrimmage turned out to be difficult, it turned out that alot of people were not comfortable with there assignments and our communication needed alot of work. So by the end of the night after playing for about 4 hours, and playing atleast 25 games, we only won 2 matches against Blunt Riders.
However, although we didn't do as well as we had hoped, what doesn't kill only makes you stronger...and smarter. We took our beatings and discussed what we felt needed to be changed. We took all of our mistakes and used them as a drive to get better and then hopefully winour next scrimmage.

Practice

O.K. so it is Sunday the 17th....practice was all about the drills....good turn out of the team players...almost everyone showed up. We had decided that for practice drill would be the best choice. I took a few of the players to do front drills and walking the feild. Bobby and Joe took everyone else to do back drills. The practice went well, alot was accomplished. The team is still growing and its definately harder than we all thought to build this team, however we all have faith and are raying for the best. And a final decision had been made then we are going to play the GXBL for our first season and then hopefully work our way into the World Cup....so hopefully A.S.K. will go on and do big things.

Assignments

O.K. so now that the team finally has some what of a roster and finally a grip on what we want to do....decisions have been made. The roster had been cut down because some people were not making practices and others just couldn't devote themselves fully to the team. However we still have some excellent players remaining. The captain Joe and myself had decided to take the players we had and make assignments. Assignments are basically where you will be playing on the feild. Joe is going to play the backcenter, Bobby plays snake corner, Matt plays dorito corner, I play the center fifty, Tom plays snake, Little Matty also plays snake/fifties, Vinny plays, doritos, Chris plays corners, Shaun plays center bunkers, and Dave is going to play where ever he wants because he is the owener of the team.
Hopefully with these assignments we will see how good we are and if things are going to work. Our next practice is sunday and I will post up and let everyone know what went down.

What To Do?

Mondays practice on February 4, 2008 didn't go as well as hoped. There is alot of controversy with this idea of the team playing the first event of the season, Phoenix Open. The captain and owner of the team both feel that the team is still to new and young to just jump into d2 or d3 xball. However the problem is that the team was promised to play all 5 events, and now some people are left out of playing the first national event of the 2008 season.
The rest of the team and myself feel that enetering Phoenix Open as a d3 team is not a bad idea, also we all want to play it because we were promised and looking forward to playing 5 events not 4. But that call is not up to me or the rest of the team. So for now the team is just going to continue practicing and will hopefully become good enough to play Phoenix Open.

How bout a lil 5 man

With the team finally starting to come together and building up some great talent, it was decided to have our first 5 man practice.
A.S.K. practiced at home, All Star Arena, the team had an inner squad 5 man scrimage. The starting line playing the second line, third line, and etc. X-ball teams usually have a 13-15 man roster, All Star kidz has a 13 person roster, the team is made up of 3 lines each consisting of 5 players, the starting line up consists of Joe, Dave, Bobby, Matt, and myself. The other 2 lines still have not been officially set yet becuase we are still trying to find the best combination for those lines. However, even though the other 2 lines are not officially set, practice was still not easy. The team in general is made up of extremely talented players, so during practice each line was playing awesome.
Practice lasted about 8 hours, leaving everyone exhausted and drained. Despite the fact we all went out to eat at Applebee's. And during dinner, Joe, Dave, and myself had all agreed that if the team continues on the road it is now. All Star Kidz definatly has the potential to be an extremely good X-Ball team.

All Star Kidz IS Born

With the 2008 X-Ball season just around the corner All Star Paintball Arena had decided to start up a brand new team to compete in the upcomming season. The team captains, Joe and myslef along with the team owner Dave, had decided that we wanted to build a team that could do way more then just compete and do well. We were starting this team to sweep the X-Ball events and place top 5 consistently.
Starting a brand new X-Ball team is never easy, X-Ball is an extremely difficult style of paintball to play and especially win. However Joe, Dave, and myself that with the right combination of players, hard work, and dedication to getting better, our dream of building a powerhouse paintball team could happen.
Now having, the team name, a home feild, and a solid plan to build up this team, it was time to put in work. The first step;finding the right combination of players.

Try Outs

Now having decided that putting this team together was a great idea, the next step was finding the right players to build a winning team. My self and the other captain Joe posted a forum on the internet that we were looking for dedicated and talented players. After only a few days the thread was being blown up by alot of people posting that they wanted to tryout. Joe and I were excited for the date of the tryout, however things didn't go as we expected.
When the day for tryouts finally rolled around, not that many people showed up, also for the few that did only a select few had the talent we were looking for. Joe and myself had decided that out of the 12 people that showed up only 2 tryouts were asked to come back for a private practice. There names were Matty and Bobby.
The problem with building a solid X-Ball team is that in order to be able to win, the team must consist of strong players, and for a short while Joe and I as well as the team owner were having doubts about if this team would make it.
Lucky for us as a few more weeks had passed by we picked up a few more players;who all looked strong and seriously ready to win. We had picked up Matt, Joe, Mike, Steve, Tom, and Dave. Not only did the team pick up some more players, as practices passed we all started to come together and started looking like a very good team. The kind of team that could win.