• Preliminary Scores

• Semi-Final Scores

• Photo Gallery

The tournament produced by Jacksonville Warriors' Paul Bollenbach and Bullseye Paintball's Jim Durante was held at Paintball Park, in Ft. Meyers, Florida.  Paintball Park is owned by Todd Adamson of the professional paintball team Aftershock.  The events major sponsors were Diablo Direct, and National Paintball Supply.  Additional sponsors included Benchmark, Pro Team Products, Airgun Designs, Warped Sports, Extreme Rage and Smart Parts.  Diablo's refrigerated semi-trailer kept both the Diablo and Zap paint sold at the field cool in the hot Florida weather.  Despite the fact that Hurricane Floyd was bearing down on the state, the air was hot and humid, so paint storage was critical.  Paint
in the hopper from even one game to the next sometimes had a rough go of it. Graham Easton of the All Americans came down from Pennsylvania to serve as ultimate judge.

A refreshing surprise for a South Florida tournament, this event
included a trade show.  Staff from Warped Sportz, Extreme Rage, and Diablo Direct had booths packed with their products.

The prize package put together by the sponsors was quite impressive.  It included 10 Powerfeed Automags, 5 Shockers, 5 f/x Autocockers, 5 MaxFlow air systems, 5 Scott gear bags, 10 JT Spectra goggle systems, 5 Benchmark 45 grip frames, 5 Benchmark HPA cradles, 5 Benchmark expansion chambers, 5 pairs of JT gloves, 15 cases of paint, 5 J&J Barrels, 10 ProTeam player packs (t-shirt, and barrel cleaning supplies), 5 Warped Sportz jerseys, and 5 Extreme Rage jerseys.  All prizes were in groups of 5, and the winning teams were allowed to choose their prizes from each category.  With this format the teams ended up with the gear that
was most useful to them.

The entire tournament was held on concept fields.  Worries that the
fields would be too wet from rains the night before were set aside.  The sandy soil was firm, yet damp enough to yield during a slide or fall. One field was built with standard wood construction bunkers, one with bunkers made from bell shaped recycling receptacles, and the third was a SupAir inflatable.  The morning got off to a bit of a rough start with some confusion as to what types of masks would be allowed, and followed by team after team disputing calls made by the referees.  As things smoothed out toward the afternoon, the morning’s delays were felt.  Staff members from Paintball Park (who had been handling recreational games in the morning), as well as some team members who didn’t make the finals pitched in to fill in as additional referees helping the last games finish at a reasonable hour.

Late in the prelims a few teams got popped with surprise velocity
penalties, not because they were initially shooting hot, but because
their regulators were not properly locked, so they had the potential to be dialed up.  Players – you’ve got to remember to lock those regs, it’s a key safety rule.  The prelims and semifinals narrowed the field of participants to Team Strange, Swat Black, OAM, Nemesis Raven, Texas Avalanche, Rebellion, Splat and Bad Karma I.  A surprise outcome for the Florida State Championship was that the first and second place teams were from Texas and Mississippi.  While it is great to see that a south Florida event can draw teams from throughout the southern US, you can bet that next year the local teams will be gunning to bring the trophies home.

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