High School Paintball goes Nationwide

[raehl]

The NCPA will host paintball's first nationwide season of high school competition this spring, culminating in the 2003 High School Paintball National Championships on May 17th at Challenge Park Xtreme in Joliet, IL.

NCPA high school tournaments are open to any 5-man team of students from the same junior high or high school. Teams do not need to be officially recognized by their school. Each school is encouraged to enter as many teams from their school in each event as they wish, and entering more teams will increase a school's scores.

"Every high school student is a potential paintball player, and there are millions of high school students across the country," said NCPA President Chris Raehl. "This league will build on the NCPAs success at the college level to bring paintball to a whole new group of potential players."

Schools will be ranked over the course of the season with the top-ranked team at the end of the season crowned the 2003 High School Paintball Season Champion. Each team may earn up to 100 ranking points at each NCPA-sanctioned tournament, with the final ranking based on the total of each school?s top two regular season scores plus double their score from the National Championships.

Prizes at all NCPA events are limited to trophies and sportsmanship in favor of lower entry fees. Schools may participate in as many NCPA events as they wish.

Field owners interested in hosting NCPA high school tournaments should contact the NCPA. There are no fees for hosting NCPA high school events. The NCPA also provides support for high school clubs and teams in your area.

Formed in 2000, the NCPA is a non-profit association of college paintball clubs in the United States and Canada with over 120 member clubs and 3500 members. For more information on the NCPAs high school league, or to find or host NCPA tournaments in your area, please visit www.high-school-paintball.com, or call or email NCPA President Chris Raehl at [email protected] or 715-720-9131.


Edit: Getting the ',' out of the high-school-paintball.com link. - Chris

[Ov3rmind]

This is so sweet, I need to get some Utah HSs involved (including my own, hehehe).

[PsychoBaller]

Makes me wish....

I was still in Highschool......err.. yah right... Go Rutgers Paintball Team.... playing on it this Spring... work needs to be done....

Uh oh.... hope Columbine doesn't form a Paintball Team....

Sorry.. had to make at least one of my jokes on AO political....

~da "smartazz" baller

[shartley]

[ogre55]

Congrats Chris. This sounds like a great thing.

Good luck with Challenge Park though. I hope you get better treatment than Shattnerball.

Ogre

[LaW]

Originally posted by shartley

I think your misunderstanding. Having different players from different schools is only possible with permission under special circumstances. At tournaments, members of the team are required to show current transcripts/Id's to verify that they are all attending the same school. It is not allowed to mix players from other schools. It does happen though. For example, our Milwaukee team had the 5 players we needed but UW-whitewater didn't have enough players there for the event. We asked permission for the 2 whitewater students to play with us so they would get a chance to participate in the event. Unless something has changed that is the way things work. Sorry if my thoughts are confusing... i'm tired

[Devil]

That is great. This is going to be a big accomplishment for paintball!! If I was still in Highschool...I'd knock out a team and get going!

[raehl]

Shartley...

No, it WON'T happen, because it's not allowed. (We make some exceptions for home schoole kids, or if you have a 40 person private catholic school, then we may make an exception to allow you to play with another school in the same school district.)

We do rank SCHOOLS, not TEAMS - schools can have as many teams as they want, but all the players on those teams need to actually attend that school. We don't want teams of kids who just happen to be the right age, because that doesn't do what we want: We want kids to be FORCED to find kids at their own school to play, and we want them to be encouraged to get kids who may not have much or any tournament experience to play.

Regardless, all teams are kids from the same school (or at least school district, in rare circumstances), and all scores from teams from the same school count for that school (with the caveat that only the top two regular season and top nationals score actually figures into ranking.)

We don't require official recognition because that can be a large, and sometimes impossible, barrier to participation. It's also a lot easier for kids to get recognition fi they can show they're competing already than it is for them to do it the other way around, esp. given the political status of the sport in some areas.


- Chris

[shartley]

Thanks... that explains it well.

[RetroEclipseMan]

They just had to start this the year after I graduate don't they. Oh, well it sounds like a great thing going on. The one question I have is how are the tournies gonna be held? What I'm trying to say is what if there are teams in lets say Washington for example that wanna compete but there are no fields in Washington hosting these events? Would they have to travel out of state or what? Or is this gonna be a nation wide deal where the organization will be able to set up tournies in every state no matter what?
I was just courious since I still have quite a few friends still in Highschool that would be interested

[BobTheCow]

wow, this is awesome!!! the highschool-paintball site is down right now, i was just wondering if you had any exact dates/locations, as well as maybe estimated fees. this is great!!!!!

[raehl]

It's www.high-school-paintball.com - site appears to be up for me now. (Also note that the link up there grabbed the comma - I should probably try to fix that.)

We have some dates up, and some pricing up as well. The pricing seems to hover about $100/team + $50/case for Premium/Blaze/Etc grade paint, some events are less.

Hosting NCPA events is easy - you need 6 teams from at least 4 different schools to show up, and you have to meet a certain other set of minimal requirements (insurance, 6 refs per field, mirrored fields (possible exceptions for indoor), etc.) You don't have to pay us any money, you can use whatever paint you want, set your pricing, etc. The only other big thing is you can't give away any prizes for winning, we'd rather see that money go towards cutting entry fees, or if you HAVE to give out prizes, give 'em out for sportsmanship. (The only way you win anything at a college tournament is by playing nice.) We really want the events to be attractive for NEW players, that's the target here, get people at your school together to try tournament paintball and have some fun.

Anyway, point is that if there isn't an event in your area, all you need to do is talk to your local field owner and ask them to run one. Set a date, set the pricing, and either let me know what that information is or have the field owner get in touch with me directly. We'll get you added to the event list and I'll know to come looking for event results afterwards. I'd like to see at least 2 events in every state, we'll see how close to that we can get this year.


- Chris

[Brak]

man i hope this idea takes off, it would be great to have a team at my school