An Accident Waiting to Happen

[SuiciDal Sn Y p ER]

Recently I've traveled with 2 teams to a large tournament in the midwest area and i was very disappointed. Not only with inexperianced referees, bathrooms with who knows what growing on them, and the fact that i was probably 200 miles away from home but that the field had insufficient netting and safety. I'm sleeping in the car after a long day and i wake up to this...
http://www.jayloo.com/files/pics/23000/DSC04899_rs.JPG
http://www.jayloo.com/files/pics/23000/DSC04901_rs.JPG

Here are some more random shots of the staging area and parking lot
http://www.jayloo.com/files/pics/23000/DSC04874_rs.JPG
http://www.jayloo.com/files/pics/23000/DSC04869_rs.JPG
http://www.jayloo.com/files/pics/23000/DSC04873_rs.JPG
http://www.jayloo.com/files/pics/23000/DSC04868_rs.JPG

Now i can understand it if paintballs bounced off air bunkers and came raining down but some of these shots completely cleared the top of the netting and went straight into the parking lot and staging area. The captain of a team i was with was hit in the face, the sister of a player on another team was also hit, and there was a rumor about a little boy being hit. I myself was hit once while sitting in the staging area. I don't get how events like this can be held on fields that are so unsafe. I'm surprised no one was seriously hurt that day with all the paintballs flying around the parking lot and staging area.

In my own honest opinion i believe that by just raising the netting up a few feet the paintballs wouldn't make it to the parking lot or staging area at dangerous speeds but i guess the field operators will have to learn the hard way.

-SnYpER

[p8ntball365]

Too bad the hard way can involve someone getting seriously hurt.

Maybe you should have talk with the owner and make some suggestions.

[SummaryJudgement]

I know this may sound weird, but lets hope that it's just insufficient netting.....the reason I say that is because I've been to a couple of World Cups where some teams would intentionally shoot over field netting because thay thought it was "funny" . I never understood why :confused:

[Blazestorm]

Trust me, its' worse around here ,some cars get 50-60 shots on them by the end of the day. I know one fan who's windshield was so covered they had to get a hose out to spray it off. Because most people are near the netting there isn't that much of a problem, and the paint isn't moving fast enough to seriously injure someone, even their eyes. But I do agree higher nets need to be put in.

[peewee]

:confused: Yea my car got stitched a couple weeks ago at a local speedball field, sad thing I was around the corner of the building!! :confused:

[TDonovan]

I've had my car hit in sides not even facing the fields. But if they're just coming over easily like that, they really should raise up the nets quite a bit.

Call me paranoid, but I'm actually thinking of buying myself some jt lenses (frame/lense - without other parts) to cover up my eyes while I'm in the staging area. There's been far too many times I've had people point guns at me without the safety or barrel sock, or had a few balls pop over a net and hit me/my car.

[Evil1]

I was at a field a couple years ago that had about 20 foot high netting which was a pretty good height, but on the one end of the field, there was a basketball sized hole in the net about chest high on me and I'm about 6'1 but the real problem I had were the younger kids walking right by the hole during games with their masks off with the hole being face high on them. I immediately told the owner who was actually really cool about it and patched the hole with another piece of netting before another game started.

[deathstalker]

Never having been to a tournament or kept up on what it's like outside of the action at them, I'm shocked that people say this is common. When I saw the thread preview, I thought it was just going to be a couple kids running around the parking lot throwing paintballs, but when I read everything and saw the pics, well, damn! Is the field set up like that on open days?

Where is that? Looks like you headed west, as that's the best place to find hills around here. :D

[shadowspar]

What I've seen done before is fields with netting over the top as well as down the sides. I think that's a superior solution to these kind of things -- that way, no stray paint can get out at all.

[SuiciDal Sn Y p ER]

Never having been to a tournament or kept up on what it's like outside of the action at them, I'm shocked that people say this is common. When I saw the thread preview, I thought it was just going to be a couple kids running around the parking lot throwing paintballs, but when I read everything and saw the pics, well, damn! Is the field set up like that on open days?

Where is that? Looks like you headed west, as that's the best place to find hills around here. :D

actually this is east of us =)

[Will Wood]

A local feild found a way around this - For this one tourney the guy didn't want balls flying over (He was sharing his parking lot with other poeple, or something like that - didn't want the cars getting hit) and solved it by this:
http://www.mrpl.org/MAC2003pics/mini03-4-081.jpg

[davidnj]

Maybe I need to look harder but I can't seem to see his solution in the pic


A local feild found a way around this - For this one tourney the guy didn't want balls flying over (He was sharing his parking lot with other poeple, or something like that - didn't want the cars getting hit) and solved it by this:
http://www.mrpl.org/MAC2003pics/mini03-4-081.jpg

[ProX9]

Note the huge mats on the bunkers.

[tony3]

I was with Snyper the whole weekend at that horrible field. I got hit in the neck and another guy on our team was actually hit in the eye, but he had glasses on. If you go to paintball valley in Nashville, IN, cover your eyes once the game starts. There was this weird army trailer thing by us that was clean at the beginning of the day and by the end was completely covered with paint.

I wish insurance companies would require 20 ft. nets like psp and nppl has.

[davidnj]

Oh...I was more looking for a net solution. Heh


Note the huge mats on the bunkers.