Rudz
03-16-2006, 05:14 PM
http://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?t=1214403
read..discuss here..
This gives you a little history, our goals, and a little sense of what it was like and how quickly the illness hit me:
At 36 I taught salsa five nights a week, played football every Sunday; I had a great group of friends. I was the owner of a new video game company and had been on the cover of two business journals in my first six months of business. I was literally at the top of my physical, social and business game. I was “Chris the ever young!” my friends would say. Best of all, I had just met the woman who would later become my wife.
At 37 I was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease. A neurological disease made famous or infamous by Katherine Hepburn, Mohammed Ali, and Michael J Fox. This disease touches 60,000 new lives a year in the US alone. During my diagnosis, the doctor said about my dancing “I would find another line of work”. I was not surprisingly, shocked, confused, crushed. At my 38th birthday party I had to be helped across the room by my wife and others that I had dipped, spun and twirled less than a year prior.
But what Parkinson’s didn’t know was that mother once said “if you’re still breathing you can try”! I learned all that I could about my illness and its treatment. Through the love and support of my family, my wife, my friends, and the incredible staff at Johns Hopkins, I improved until I was dancing and playing paintball again (a sport which I love as does my wife). Many people can’t even tell I have the disease. But despite my outward appearance and my ability to compete in my sport, I am reminded by my illness every day that the clock is ticking and I must make the most of my time as an athlete and role model. I knew that I had to do something while I could…
Team Tremor
Today, I am the co-captain (with my wife) of Tremor, a 7 man National Professional Paintball League (NPPL) (www.nppl.tv) team from Maryland named in honor of my illness and our cause.
We will be competing next year in Division II of both the NPPL and Millennium Series(www.millennium-series.com) as not only do we want to compete at the highest level our skills will allow, the NPPL and Millennium are the world’s premier paintball series and we want to put our message on the international stage.
We want to give a portion of everything that we win or make merchandising the team to Parkinson’s research. The team will be professionally run to represent the sponsors and our cause. We have field coaches, player skill coaches, and a personnel manager in our management team.
This is our mission statement:
We are Team Tremor.
We are a group of players, sponsors, and supporters that share a set of common goals.
To raise awareness, support, and contributions toward Parkinson's disease research and its cure through the sport of paintball
To contribute a portion of all team earnings through competition or merchandising to Parkinson’s disease research
To give the disabled and underprivileged a voice in our sport and to create opportunities for them to enjoy the game at whatever levels their abilities will allow
To encourage all paintball players to create, in their communities, Positive Change Through Paintball
To be ambassadors for our sponsors and the sport that we love and to emulate and respect those who made the game what is today.
To show young people that commitment, effort, determination, and a dream can take them anywhere they want to go…then help them get there.
To be professional in all that we do.
To win.
Our team is dedicated to the highest levels of professionalism both on and off camera. To make sure that we represent our sponsors properly at all times, I will provide professional media training to all team members. I am an award winning public speaker, video game, and simulation designer by trade and have received professional media training four times during my career.
We have begun a rigorous training schedule that started in July and will continue until the start of the season in Huntington Beach 2006. Our sincere goal is to be a top 20 Div. II team from the start of the season. Our goal is to out practice and out work the majority of Div. II teams in the league. Rick Hartman will be our coach, Derrick Mitchell, will be our assistant coach. We believe that this work ethic, training regimen, and our experience (I have been a player since 1991) will get us were we need to be.
read..discuss here..
This gives you a little history, our goals, and a little sense of what it was like and how quickly the illness hit me:
At 36 I taught salsa five nights a week, played football every Sunday; I had a great group of friends. I was the owner of a new video game company and had been on the cover of two business journals in my first six months of business. I was literally at the top of my physical, social and business game. I was “Chris the ever young!” my friends would say. Best of all, I had just met the woman who would later become my wife.
At 37 I was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease. A neurological disease made famous or infamous by Katherine Hepburn, Mohammed Ali, and Michael J Fox. This disease touches 60,000 new lives a year in the US alone. During my diagnosis, the doctor said about my dancing “I would find another line of work”. I was not surprisingly, shocked, confused, crushed. At my 38th birthday party I had to be helped across the room by my wife and others that I had dipped, spun and twirled less than a year prior.
But what Parkinson’s didn’t know was that mother once said “if you’re still breathing you can try”! I learned all that I could about my illness and its treatment. Through the love and support of my family, my wife, my friends, and the incredible staff at Johns Hopkins, I improved until I was dancing and playing paintball again (a sport which I love as does my wife). Many people can’t even tell I have the disease. But despite my outward appearance and my ability to compete in my sport, I am reminded by my illness every day that the clock is ticking and I must make the most of my time as an athlete and role model. I knew that I had to do something while I could…
Team Tremor
Today, I am the co-captain (with my wife) of Tremor, a 7 man National Professional Paintball League (NPPL) (www.nppl.tv) team from Maryland named in honor of my illness and our cause.
We will be competing next year in Division II of both the NPPL and Millennium Series(www.millennium-series.com) as not only do we want to compete at the highest level our skills will allow, the NPPL and Millennium are the world’s premier paintball series and we want to put our message on the international stage.
We want to give a portion of everything that we win or make merchandising the team to Parkinson’s research. The team will be professionally run to represent the sponsors and our cause. We have field coaches, player skill coaches, and a personnel manager in our management team.
This is our mission statement:
We are Team Tremor.
We are a group of players, sponsors, and supporters that share a set of common goals.
To raise awareness, support, and contributions toward Parkinson's disease research and its cure through the sport of paintball
To contribute a portion of all team earnings through competition or merchandising to Parkinson’s disease research
To give the disabled and underprivileged a voice in our sport and to create opportunities for them to enjoy the game at whatever levels their abilities will allow
To encourage all paintball players to create, in their communities, Positive Change Through Paintball
To be ambassadors for our sponsors and the sport that we love and to emulate and respect those who made the game what is today.
To show young people that commitment, effort, determination, and a dream can take them anywhere they want to go…then help them get there.
To be professional in all that we do.
To win.
Our team is dedicated to the highest levels of professionalism both on and off camera. To make sure that we represent our sponsors properly at all times, I will provide professional media training to all team members. I am an award winning public speaker, video game, and simulation designer by trade and have received professional media training four times during my career.
We have begun a rigorous training schedule that started in July and will continue until the start of the season in Huntington Beach 2006. Our sincere goal is to be a top 20 Div. II team from the start of the season. Our goal is to out practice and out work the majority of Div. II teams in the league. Rick Hartman will be our coach, Derrick Mitchell, will be our assistant coach. We believe that this work ethic, training regimen, and our experience (I have been a player since 1991) will get us were we need to be.