Glickman
03-23-2004, 10:10 PM
your wish is my command!
http://www.imageshack.us/img1/2273/GlennLickingTom.jpg
Gahahahahah I shall require a cobalt xmag for this not to get out tom :D
http://www.imageshack.us/img1/1050/MeandDad.jpg
Me and my dad (heh, dont laugh, hes one of the best tourny players around ;) ) were slipping... ow.. freaking thorny bushes..
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The Story to end all Shatnerball II stories!!
well, im not very good at stories, so here it goes... a group of cavlry guy (about 6) cross enemy lines, with a half an hour trek to the bridge, fight off 2 reinforments' worth of tom's boys, and only one returns on foot with a cow in hand (as far as i know) ... squeeking for acres.... thusly, he is deemed.... "COW THIEF!!"
buahahahaha!!! good times, good times...
It kinda reminded me of band of brothers, one time, we heard a twig snap. so using hand signals, mr. flatline lead us, with our backs towards each other.
Then... a gun is fired from our side, and most of us drop, and a barrage of balls flies into the fields, and outta nowhere, 3 enemies walk off the field with guns held high.
If any of you guys are one of those that belonged to that "group", tell me, cause we gotta hook up on kaye's team and KICK SHATNERS' A**!!!!!!
W00t!!!
PirateGent
08-07-2004, 10:53 PM
Shatnerball 2003 Pictures (http://www.ussjustice.org/pastevents/2003/spplat.htm)
Written for an article in our club's informational newszine The Communique' (http://cq.ussatlas.org/) which is released 6 times a year. (issue #119)
STARFLEET GOES "SPPLAT"
By Alycia Gerben
“My job is to protect the inflatable cows ... and the plastic piggybanks," Commodore Edward Tunis III, of the USS Justice, said recently.
You may not think protecting blow up cows and plastic piggybanks are is a very important job, but in a paintball game, it could be a matter of life or death.
Or well, maybe 20 minutes in the penalty box, called the Dead Zone. Plus points for the opposing team if the players or the cows or piggybanks are “marked.” What does that mean? It means the cows were hit by one or more paintballs spewing from markers (guns) of the Raiders, the Justice’s rivals in a massive paintball game.
It seems that the cows are worth 50 points to anyone that can hit them. And on Labor Day weekend, Tunis, Captain Jonathan Kus and Captain Michael Stein, were up to the job of protecting them. No Raider would be allowed to hit or steal the inflatable livestock if the trio had their way.
Edward Tunis and six members of the Justice, accompanied by a USS Richthofen member and a USS Flying Fox member, got to test, and for some, try out for the first time, paintball battle skills and tactics. On August 29-31, the group participated in William Shatner's Spplat Attack II, an eight hour scenario paintball game. The game was held at EMR Paintball in New Milford, Pennsylvania.
Team Justice, led by Tunis, consisted of Kus, Stein, Lt. J.G. Gene Hendricks, Lt. J.G. Michelle Hendricks, Lt. Commander Daniel Swift, Lt. Commander Alycia Gerben, Fleet Captain Trisha Tunis and Lt. Phil Avery.
Spplat Attack is a charity paintball game that supports the Hollywood Charity Horse Show, Shatner's own charity, which he has been running for 11 years, according to WilliamShatner.com. The charity uses horses therapeutically to work with disadvantaged and handicapped children.
Team Justice and 700 other paintballers were on hand at the 122-acre field and raised over $100,000 for the charity. For $100, players received a team jersey and three days of playing paintball, culminating in Sunday’s big game. People from all walks of life participated, from kids to a grandmother in a wheelchair and from novice players to professional players.
Several vendors set up booths and sold paintball gear throughout the weekend.
And the best part of all was that the guest of honor and captain of one of the paintball teams was non other than the former Captain James T. Kirk, 72 year old actor William Shatner. Shatner was also the headlining guest at a Creation Entertainment mini-convention run on Saturday in Binghamton, New York.
SUBHEAD: THE SCENARIO OF THE GAME
The year was 2112. Wild Bill Shatner received news that the outlaw Omar Tartan escaped from his cryogenic cell and traveled back to the year 1875. Wild Bill and his Magnificent Seven were sent back in time to retrieve Tartan. (The Magnificent Seven are professional paintball players).
Due to inaccuracies with temporal traveling, Tartan arrived in the year 1875, a few months earlier than Shatner and assembled a team of Raiders. Wild Bill allied himself with the Calvary of 1875 to retrieve and capture Tartan and his band of Raiders.
SUBHEAD: PREPARATION FOR THE BIG GAME
The Justice, of course, chose to follow Wild Bill Shatner's leadership and joined the good guys, the Calvary team.
To prepare, Tunis decided to have the crew practice by shooting into the woods across the street from his front yard.
And in order to stand out, Tunis decided to have Justice members create Calvary costumes. Tunis and Swift found some black neckerchiefs. Swift designed a yellow Justice logo, which was printed via computer onto t-shirt iron-ons and transferred on to the neckerchief. A 1" inch piece of plastic tubing served as a clasp.
Tunis ordered a Calvary officer's hat and already owned a saber. He stood out wearing the hat in a thundershower and several rainstorms in order to mold the hat into the proper shape, according to Fleet Captain Trish Tunis, his wife.
Swift and other Team Justice members scoured Army-Navy stores to find infantry hats, called kepi, in blue and black. Calvary cross saber pins were fastened to the hats. Army pants in black or blue were used, with a yellow stripe sewn or taped down the side seam.
Some of the female Justice members chose to wear skirts which Michelle Hendricks dyed light blue. The women wore black leggings underneath and yellow plastic flowers in their hair. Black boots with ankle support were also required.
In addition, Spplat designed team jerseys for the event which were made by the company Paintball Junkies. The Calvary jerseys were bright electric blue with a printed yellow bandana in front and yellow stars and buttons on the sleeves. The Raiders’ shirts were gray with a red bandana and a Pancho Villa style bandoleer. On both shirts, several sponsors’ logos were listed over the chest. The sides of the shirts were black mesh to ventilate the players.
To complete the look, Tunis purchased two flags, called gideons. The flags were replicas of the Seventh Calvary's F Troop and General George Custer's personal flag.
The reason Edward Tunis and crew decided to go to all the trouble was that Spplat promoter JJ Brookshire hinted that Team Justice might serve as Shatner's Honor Guard. And when Tunis described the costumes to Brookshire, that possibility became a reality.
As a last minute preparation, Saturday night, partially in costume, Team Justice practiced marching, in the narrow hallway of the motel they were staying in, much to the amusement of some of the motel’s other guests. “At least they were Union troops,” one passerby commented.
SUBHEAD: THE OPENING CEREMONIES
Team Justice arrived at the field at 7 a.m and while waiting for instruction, the crew was approached by other paintball players. Most were civil and asked for photos. But one group challenged Team Justice’s abilities by yelling out, “Yes, they look pretty, but can they play?” A resounding and forceful “yes” and “just wait and see” were among the varied responses, especially from Team Justice’s females.
Before the opening ceremonies, the Justice personally met Shatner and spent time with him as he posed for promotional photos for a paintball magazine and prepared for battle.
“We lined up at the top of a hill and watched as Shatner posed for some paintball pictures on top of a boulder,” Gene Hendricks recalls. “He was told to “strike a macho pose,” putting Michelle [Hendricks] in hysterics.”
For 45 minutes while waiting for the ceremonies to start, Shatner posed for photos with the crew and answered a few questions. The crew was a little intimated at first to approach him.
“After a little while I worked up the nerve to ask if we could take some pictures with him. So I got an individual shot and we also had a few group shots taken. I think that was the highlight of my day,” Phil Avery said. “I didn’t get his autograph, but I got my picture with him.”
Responding to a question, Team Justice told Shatner about the Star Trek paintball scenario games that the group participates in twice a year in the Pocono area. Shatner was impressed and questioned why there weren’t more Starfleet members playing at Spplat.
“One thing that Bill mentioned was that he was surprised there weren’t more members from Starfleet attending this paintball event,” Michael Stein commented. “We assured Bill that we would certainly do our best to ensure a more active participation in next year’s event.”
Shatner was impressed with Team Justice’s neckerchiefs and asked for extras for himself and his wife to wear during the game.
“We had extras prepared just in case,” Tunis said. Shatner also noticed Tunis’ Calvary officer’s hat and asked, “What size do you wear?” Tunis loaned him the hat and his saber for the opening ceremonies.
Borrowing Tunis’ hat though, while an honor, ended up being a double-edged sword. Tunis became Shatner’s unwitting body-double as other players thought Tunis was Shatner and tried to shoot him.
“I didn’t know what to expect. When I ran back to the car to retrieve the bandanas … I must have been excited because I locked the keys in the car,” Edward Tunis said.
“You were a goofball,” Trish Tunis said. “Its thrilling to meet a man … someone who made an impact on our lives … I wouldn’t have met Ed without Star Trek fandom.”
“To tell the truth, he is a very nice and relaxed man, when not on stage in front of an audience,” Gene Hendricks said. “He told us how he appreciated our efforts and admired our outfits, especially Ed’s hat.”
Finally, Justice members lined up and, along with three U.S. Army recruiters, escorted Shatner’s Humvee to the stage. Shatner rode on top of the Humvee and waved Tunis’ sword into the air.
On the stage, he was joined by his co-captain, Chicago DJ Eric “Mancow” Muller. The Raiders were led by paintball industry legend Tom Kaye, owner of Airgun Designs and Glenn Palmer, owner of Palmer Pursuits.
Once there, testosterone wafted through the crowd (which were 95% men) as the battle of the captains began. Each side tried to psyche each other out by insulting each other during “trash talk.” Taunting Shatner, Kaye gave him a care package -- a big pack of Depends undergarments, Centrum vitamins and a six-pack of Ensure vitamin shake.
Before going on the field, protective gear has to be donned, including masks neck protectors, knee braces, hats and gloves. Water bottles need to be filled, paint put into hoppers. Lastly, guns have to be chronographed, which is measuring the velocity at which the paintball leaves the “marker” (the gun). If the gun chronoed at 280 feet per second or less, the player was allowed on the field. If not, the gun had to be adjusted before the player was allowed on the field. As people completed their tasks, they walked to the insertion point to the fields which doubled as the Dead Zone. Players were inserted every 20 minutes.
SUBHEAD – TEAM JUSTICE ON THE FIELD
Most of the Team Justice crew has fond memories and funny stories about their time on the field.
Michelle and Gene Hendricks played for the first time. Once on the field, the Hendrickses and Jon Kus headed up to a castle where they were ordered to reinforce the front line. Gene Hendricks and Kus joined the action but Michelle Hendricks stayed back a little.
In this scenario game, if a person is hit and a medic finds them and “heals” them within a minute, the player can rejoin the game. If not, the player has to get off the field and go to the Dead Zone, and wait until the next reinsertion. The referees will time the medics.
“I was hit in the first 15 minutes but I got to a medic,” Gene Hendricks recalled. “I rejoined the fight and was hit in the face in short order. So I went out to relax a little and gave Michele a tap on the shoulder as I passed her.”
Michelle Hendricks was then hit in the trigger. She laid in the grass on her back and screamed for the medic while a referee stood over her, watching the clock ticking. A medic found her with just seconds remaining before she would have been out of the game..
Michelle Hendricks’ gun is a Custom 98 Sniper, a flatline that is good for straight shooting and shoots 100 yards beyond a standard paintball gun. Once healed, Michelle Hendricks then hid behind a tire. Because of her type gun, she was ordered by another player to shoot into an 18 x 18 window of an enemy bunker about 150 yards away. The gun was accurate and hit its mark, marking eight other players and covering them with paint.
“Oh my God,” Michelle Hendricks thought at the time. “What’d the hell I do. I didn’t even realize that I hit somebody. He told me to shoot through the window and I did.”
Then she continued to hide behind a tire for about five minutes. But her luck ran out. She advanced from behind the tire to behind a little hill and could not find Gene Hendricks or Kus but found inflatable barriers. At the time, she was following another player, the grandmother in the wheelchair. As soon as she got near the barriers, she heard a quick retreat behind her from other players.
“Suddenly I was alone. I heard a bunch of guys say “there she is” and I was shot in the cup,” Hendricks said.
This was ironic because earlier in the day, she and Trish Tunis had been taunting several male paintball players, announcing that they were going to shoot to find out which players were wearing protective cups. Michelle Hendricks was wearing a female protective cup herself.
Stein and Avery had the most stamina, being the first members onto the field and playing most of the day.
Avery was Shatner’s bodyguard on the field. He accompanied Shatner when Shatner had to sign flags at a pond. Shatner was then to return to base to complete the mission. But that didn’t happen.
“We came under fire just after he signed the flags and instead of leaving right away he decided to join in the battle, so there I was shooting side by side with Captain Kirk,” Avery said. “It was great.”
Then, Avery said, Shatner decided to swipe a golf cart that belonged to a TV crew to return to base camp instead of hiking to the camp. They were located at the bottom of a very steep hill with mud and fallen branches on the road.
“At one point the cart got stuck in the mud and at least five guys got behind to help push him out. I felt sorry for the guy in the middle,” Avery said. “When the cart finally started to move, he fell flat on his face into mud at least a foot deep. It took two other guys to pull him out and he was covered. Meanwhile, Bill was rocketing his way up the hill like a maniac, running over any rocks or trees in his way with reckless abandon.”
After lunch, Edward Tunis, Stein and Kus were in the castle, called Fort Courage. Fort Courage was the headquarters for the Calvary. The three guarded the back gate and a pen full of inflatable animals including the blowup cows and plastic piggybanks. The objective was for the Raiders to steal or shoot the animals. Stein said he was at the castle for about two hours.
“And during our shift, we didn’t lose any animals,” Stein said.
At one point during their time at the castle, Kus was walking on the upper level of the fortress when he spotted an enemy scout on a hill just diagonal and at the same elevation from where he stood. Kus was unprotected on a catwalk with a bare minimum of cover.
“We just kind of stopped and stared at one another for what seemed minutes,” Kus said. “Of course it was only seconds, but as I turned and shouted an alarm for my fellow guards I began to trade shots with the intruder. We both managed to miss our opponent, I guess my adrenaline got the best of me. That's what I get for letting my guard down.”
After replacements arrived, Kus and Tunis moved up to higher ground towards a depot that was worth points toward the final scoring. The enemy did not get to the depot quickly which caused the players to let their guard down again.
“It took a while for the enemy to reach the depot and as a matter of fact, we were caught by surprise again,” Kus said. “This time the depot was in the middle of an open field and the attackers failed to notice a few of us off to the side just beyond the tree line.”
He continued, “My fellow Justice officer, Mike Stein ran into the fray to try and save Commodore Ed, who had gotten pinned down in the open near the wall of the small outpost.
I was determined not to lose my advantage so I held still until I had a definite shot. Mike was drawing their fire and one of the enemy circled an evergreen to try and outflank him. This brought him directly into my field of fire and he was unaware until I unleashed about a half dozen shots into his 'personal space'. I had taken him out, but his buddy learned quickly and made a dash for the depot, which was no longer in our possession.”
Kus then spent the next five to 10 minutes in a firefight with two Raiders who had nailed the other three Calvary players in the group. He only had a tree stump for cover, and he was hit in the head for the second time that day. That headshot sent him to the Dead Zone.
“I had to go over and shake his hand afterward because neither of us expected to last as long as we did,” Kus said. “He told me that he didn't think they were going to make the play -- he was impressed with our perseverance.”
Team Justice kept in touch on the field with talkabouts, a form of walkie-talkies that are no bigger than a cell phone and can be fastened onto gear and used with earphones. After lunch, after Swift, Avery and Gene Hendricks decided to try and find and help the rest of Team Justice on the field. They headed toward the castle but were stopped by Pacman, Shatner’s right hand man, who was giving a lot of the orders that day.
Swift said that Pacman leaned over railing on the fort wall and yelled, “You guys want a mission” to the trio. “Go over to that town and see if the yellow flag is, indeed, still yellow.”
The town was about 50 feet away and was empty. After checking and double-checking every building, the three did not find any flag and Swift doubted that a flag existed. They reported back to Pacman. When Pacman was told that the settlement was searched and no flag existed, he was puzzled because the settlement was supposed to be Mancow’s main base and he had not been seen there since the game began.
Swift said, “Pacman then turns to us and said, “Do you want to get into the fight? Yes? Good. The main fight is on the field. But I need you to defend Kansas Settlement. The Raiders are sending sorties out along the right side of the field. If enough of them get through, they could take the Kansas flag. And then we’ll lose points.”
So the trio headed up a hill to the Kansas settlement and tried to stop the Raiders from getting close. As they trekked, they met several other players who were looking for missions and they ended up with a sortie of about 10 troops.
“We walked over the hill and down the other side. The popping sound of paint markers was always in the distance. We followed the road until the popping sound became clearer,” Swift said.
The trio saw a pair of Calvary troops in a firefight, Gene Hendricks said continuing the story. He kneeled down behind a boulder and Swift and Avery hid behind trees. The group exchanged fire with the enemy and then had to split fire to two sides when the Raiders came up the ridge on the left.
Avery was hit and had to head for the Dead Zone since no medic was available. Then Swift ran out of ammunition and acted as a spotter for Hendricks until he was hit. Swift headed back to the Dead Zone and was hit again by his own team. Hendricks was then hit again on the leg and shoulder and had to walk almost the entire field to get out, including some hills. He decided he was finished for the day.
Edward Tunis’ favorite moment of the day came when he was off the field. He was taking a break after being tagged out on the left elbow. Two Raiders came up to him.
“They asked what was I doing with Shatner’s hat?” he said. “I explained to them, saying nooo, it’s my hat, the question should be what was Shatner doing with my hat.”
Edward Tunis said the Raiders gave him a puzzled look. One of the Raiders said he was playing at the ammo dump on the field a few minutes earlier, where Tunis was tagged out.
“[The Raider said] his heart rate began to increase when he saw the hat and he thought he had Shatner in his gunsight. I told him, `no, it was me you got, but you can feel free to tell all your friends it was Shatner … but I’ll know the truth,’” Tunis said.
At 4:30 p.m., the game was called to a halt to prepare for the one-hour final battle in Tombstone. Avery, Kus, Edward Tunis and Stein decided to participate. The objective was to take the two-story center building. The Calvary took the building. Tunis’ gun was hit in the stock and he was out of the game and Kus and Stein returned only when they ran out of paint. Avery was in the second floor of the building with Mancow and he took a look out the window and was hit by paint.
Stein described entering the field for that last battle as “a wall of paint,”
“It was like a Civil War reenactment. You’re coming in and all you saw was a wall of paint coming at you and I was in the back,” he said.
SUBHEAD: CLOSING CEREMONY
In the end, the Calvary proved resilient, winning the game by a huge margin, 1,666 points to the Raiders’ 1,195. The closing ceremony ended with the paintball vendors giving away thousands of dollars in prizes including gear, such as markers, loaders, hoppers and holsters. While everyone came away with something small, Stein was the big winner, grabbing several prizes including a nitro tank.
During the giveaway, Shatner told the story of nearly being betrayed by one of his Calvary teammates. Raider Tom Kaye coerced the teammate, Batman, to bring Shatner to the Raider’s camp in exchange for a new, expensive paintball marker. Instead, Batman went to Shatner and told him about the plan, double-crossing Kaye. Shatner let himself be taken to Kaye’s camp but he came armed. Shatner faked a heart attack, even scaring his right hand-man Pacman. He then knocked Kaye out of the game when he tapped him on the shoulder, breaking a paintball in the process.
The giveaway was followed by an auction for Shatner’s charity. Mancow offered $650 to have Shatner paste a ladybug temporary tattoo on his behind. Shatner obliged but went a step further and autographed Mancow’s butt with the words “Shatner was here.” In addition, a biker offered $650 for Mancow to do the same thing. Mancow very reluctantly obliged. Another auction highlight was when Fox news channel’s Colonel David Hunt auctioned off a Taliban hat with a bullet hole through it.
The entire event was filmed by Outdoor Life Network and will be shown as part of a paintball documentary that will be airing in October of 2003.
Contributed to by Daniel Swift, Gene and Michelle Hendricks, Michael Stein, Phil Avery, Ed and Trish Tunis and Jonathan Kus.
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