Paintball enjoys under-the-radar success

Many students at UConn heard about the school's club paintball team when it became the center of controversy about funding from the Undergraduate Student Government. While the dispute brought a lot of attention to the team, UConn paintball's current president and field captain Antonio Costa believes that many people still don't quite understand what UConn paintball is all about.

"A lot of people don't even know anything about paintball or about our team," said Costa, a senior biomedical engineering and German double major. "Once they hear 'paintball' they all of a sudden think, 'Oh, these kids are out just in the woods. It's a waste of our money. Why are students paying for these students to go out and run around in the woods?' It's not like that at all."

Instead, this team makes its mark at the most competitive level in collegiate paintball, playing in tournaments hosted at established paintball facilities all across the Northeast and the rest of the country.

UConn's paintball team began competing in the National Collegiate Paintball Association, an organization comprising 440 different clubs, in 2003. Since then, the Huskies have elevated themselves to the upper echelon of collegiate paintball teams, winning the Class AA title in 2005 and back-to-back Class A titles in 2006 and 2007.

"It's extremely exciting, you know?" Costa, who has captained the team since his sophomore year, said. "You can consider yourself a national champion. As a team, we got really close together after that point because you've worked hard all season and in the end you have something to celebrate."

In Class A, the team plays a version of the game known as X-ball, which is a lot like five-on-five capture the flag - except this variant has large inflatable bunkers strewn all over the field and two teams shooting anywhere from 10 to 12 cases worth of paintballs, fired at a rate of 15 per second, with specialized guns known as markers. The paintballs, which come 2,000 to a case, can reach speeds upwards of 300 feet per second.

Matches are broken down into 16-minute halves. Each team works from opposite sides of the field to reach the flag, located on a large inflatable X in the center of the field, and bring it back to their starting point as many times as possible before time is up. All the while, each team fires at the other and any players who are hit with a paintball must sit out until the next point.

UConn's team, currently made up of 22 students, competes with three main lines of five to seven members. The first two lines see most of the action in tournaments, while the third gets rotated in more sparingly, Costa said. The remaining members not in the first three lines are primarily practice players.

The Huskies went 13-0 in division play this past season to win their second straight title in the Northeast Conference, which features Army, Drexel, Maryland, Penn State and Rutgers. While the Huskies entered Class A nationals as a favorite to win it all, it was division rival Penn State that up-ended UConn with a narrow one-point victory in the quarterfinals.

"I'd say Penn State right now [is our biggest rival] because we beat them all year and then we went down to nationals and they beat us in nationals and that sucks," Costa said. "We're actually pretty good friends with them. We go to events with them, we go hang out with them, we have a good time, but when it comes down to playing, we want to kill them."

The team practices on weekends from the first week of classes until the national championship at Matt's Outback Paintball, an indoor and outdoor paintball facility about 15 minutes west of campus in Coventry. Costa added that all students can get a discount rate at Matt's Outback through the team's deal with the facility. All they have to do is contact him or another club officer.

This past semester, the team received $12,000 from USG - money used for paintballs and event entrance fees. In February, USG Comptroller Jason Ortiz attempted to veto the club's request. The veto was overturned and Ortiz was nearly impeached on allegations of being biased against club sports. All the while, Costa said that the team felt caught in the middle of a personal dispute and unfairly judged by outsiders who had little idea of the costs involved for the sport, leaving the team in a more negative light.

Being a member of the paintball team doesn't come cheap. While the team receives funding from USG and the Club Sports Council, the team members are in charge of buying their own guns, uniforms and padding, which can add up to a couple thousand dollars per person. During his time at UConn, Costa figures he has spent at least $4,000 of his own money on gear, which includes two guns - each with the Husky logo on them.

Costa said all UConn students are welcome to try out for the team and that he is trying to increase the team's visibility on campus through YouTube and other outlets. This past fall, the team got 11 new recruits, all of varying experience levels. Aside from the thrill of the tournaments, Costa said some of the most rewarding time he spends with the team is on the practice field with the less experienced players.

"It's really a club, so it's fun teaching others how to play and watching kids over time progress," Costa said. "At least every semester we get, I'd say, four or five kids that aren't really all that good and they're kind of new to the sport and then at the end of the year, you kind of see them start shooting people and it's like, 'Wow, this kid has improved so much.' It's a good feeling."