High School Team

[Bartleby]

I was tossing around the idea of making a school paintball team. anyone have any ideas on how to go about doing this? Any thoughts are very much apreciated. :D

[slateman]

Yea. Convice the school board and the entire PTA that ten guys bringing paintball guns to school is really a good thing. (yes I am being sarcastic). Dude, it's not gonna happen.

1. Schools have this inheriant fear of anything that resembles a firearm at school. Must have something to do with all the school shootings.

2. Paintball is too exspensive for a HS to fund, even if you had all of your own gear. Who's gonna pay for practice paint and entry fees, your teamates.

3. Where are you gonna practice? If its a school sponsered team than the school is responsible for you. Which means you have to be on school property.

4. Who's gonna coach/supervise?

Its not a bad idea but its not practical.

[FooTemps]

Paintball Team would be really hard but a paintball club would be achievable...

[gimp]

http://www.college-paintball.com Might be some helpful info there.

[The Mad Painter]

try this. www.high-school-paintball.com im helping out getting a Midwest league going. also checlk the post by raehl about the April 27th tournament. gonna be the high school nationals. how far is deerfield from Geneso, Moline, Rock island, places like that? that's where we paly. and we're always l;ooking for another member the for the 27th., later

[PyRo]

Tried it :) Not going to happen. Apperantly they used to have a rifle team though :-/

[Bartleby]

alright here goes:

i've already gone paintballing with my school twice. part of the outdoor adventure club. the teachers thought it was a blast and were all for having a school team. therefore, i believe it to be achievable.

my school board will be looking at the safety statistics on paintball this week. they are all very young, openminded people that love kids and sports. a few of which actually went with us last time.

maybe i should have said this before. my school is a rather wealthy one. the average salary in my area is over 600000 a year. i, myself wouldn't have a problem paying my share of the expensises and neither would any of the other people i play with. they are as much for this as i am.

in terms of practice, you don't know my school. i don't mean to be defensive or anything, but we have facilities to accomidate our needs. and like i said, we've been paintballing as a school before.

who would coach and supervise? the head football coach. big paintball fanatic he is.

Mad Painter:
deerfield is about 115 min from CPX. it's in the northern suburbs of chicago. i haven't heard of any of the places you mentioned but i will look them up. and i may be looking for a team. let me see where those fields are though. i'll get back to ya. :D

[mag_pbg]

slateman I don't know abotu you but,at my school paintbal is a comman thing, I've brought my mag to school atleast three times with out having any probs. Also when a kid at my school was hosting a paintball turnoment, the school allowed him to post fliers around the school, just abotu everyone has a paintball magazine that they read atleast twice a day, and none of the teachers care, now the big issue at my school is, who would coach, and practive feilds, I think I read somewhere that if you can get a team together than most feilds would either sponcer you or give you discounts, and since a guy i know that plays paintball alot works at the local feild he could probably convince them to help out some!

[FeelTheRT]

i hate to be a 'donkey' but face the facts. It ain't gonna happen. Paintball is an outcast sport. It's expensive, poorly judged, and expensive. You can try to make a paintball club but that would still be a real challenge, GL.

[Bartleby]

awww....come on. can't i just live in my dream world for a little bit? :D

[Zo]

i'm trying to do the same thing here in Valpo.

[nutz]

bartleby i live really close to deerfield. im a freshman at gbn.. me and my friends are starting a pb club. we could play u and ur friends some time, which would be great. gbn vs deerfield game. haha... well maybe we could get together and play one day. if u guys have a field in deerfield i would definitly want to play there, cause we only have a wooded area and its not really that great. pm me to talk about it

[raehl]

The facts are that you can start a high school paintball club and team. I know because it's been done. The NCPA started our high school program the beginning of this year, and there are already at least two dozen high school clubs and teams around the country, including at least one which is officially an officially recognized school activity in Oklahoma. I'm not saying that playing is free yet, but getting support from the school is perfectly feasible.

www.high-school-paintball.com is a good place to get started. If you go to the web board there, you'll get all the direct help you could possibly need. You can also email me directly at raehl311@yahoo.com, I'm in WI and am down in IL fairly regularly so I could potentially talk to anyone in the administration who needs talking to, but could definitely make a couple phone calls and write a letter or two on your behalf.

And you don't need to be an official club to have a high school team. A lot of people think that if they're principal isn't in with paintball that its over - nothing could be farther from the case. Set up rec events for other students, get them the information to come out and play, do it on a regular basis, and bam, you've got a club. Get people's parents to come out with you and participate and you'd be surprised how quickly attitudes can change in your area. The key is parental involvement if you encounter initial resistence in acceptance from the administration.

The argument that it's too expensive is silly - hockey is *WAY* mor expensive and many high schools have hockey clubs and teams. Once your club is established, you won't be paying general public rates to play anyway. There are several fields in the IL/WI area willing to work with high school students to establish clubs (getting those students at your school into paintball is good buisiness for them). The NCPA is happy to back you every step of the way, and there are several other HS clubs in the WI/IL area already. HS clubs also get access to the NCPA benefits package.

So take a quick look at www.high-school-paintball.com. Any questions or need any help, post em or email me. Don't pay any attention to the people who say it can't be done - it's actually VERY easy to do, I started a club when I was in high school, although I didn't call it such at the time. Just handed out flyers to people I knew, reserved the field, and a buncha us high school folk (70-80) would go play paintball once a semester.

It's not that it's difficult to have a high school club or team, you just need to convince yourself it's possible. That's the hardest part, everything after that is easy. In the very least, get 5 kids from your high school, start practicing, and go to Nationals on April 27 at CPX.

You wouldn't believe the number of people who told us a national college league wasn't going to happen, but we just decided we were going to do it, and here it is.

- Chris

[Bartleby]

thanks a lot for the information everyone. and chris, thank you very much. i'll be talking with my deans and a number of other board members tomorrow.