Get a coach.
If at all possible, find a faculty member at your school who is into paintball and get them to be your coach, and let him make all the big decisions. If you can separate those decisions from the people who actually PLAY you'll be doing yourself a big favor. Just because MOST paintball teams have a PLAYER who is the captain and does the coaching doesn't mean that it's the best way to do it. You had a coach in track and cross country, right? If you can't get a faculty member, try and enlist the help of a player or field owner or someone else from your area. Practice against an Am team in your area a lot? Ask someone on that team with a good amount of experience and a good temprament if they'd be your coach.
If you can't do that, you may just have to stage a popular revolt. I was tournament captain at the University of Illinois for a semester - but not because I was the best player on the team (I'm not sure I was even close), but because I was the guy who made the reservations, paid the registration, made sure people were getting to practice, recruited new members, and dealt with the politics of picking who played on which of our teams (we had 3 at the time, I think UofI is up to 5 now.) Coaching? Nobody on our team did that, that's what the local Am teams were for, along with our advisor.
The team I play on now, I'm probably the most experienced player (which is not to be confused with the best player, as I'm horrendously out of practice and new to the team so I havn't seen a lot of the other guys play much.) But I'm also not the captain. Our captain is a guy who knows everyone on the team fairly well, is charged with all the areas of responsibility, and makes all the decisions, and he does all of that well. Coaching is pretty evenly split amongst everyone; we all know we're not perfect and are looking for what our teammates see we can do better.
In the long run, any player who thinks they're above criticism should be tossed. I don't care WHO you are, there's always room for improvement, and if someone has decided they don't need to improve anymore they've just made themselves a liability.
What school do you play for, if you don't mind me asking? You can drop me an email at [email protected] if you don't want to post it - maybe I can just smack your captain upside the head directly and save you the trouble.
- Chris
If at all possible, find a faculty member at your school who is into paintball and get them to be your coach, and let him make all the big decisions. If you can separate those decisions from the people who actually PLAY you'll be doing yourself a big favor. Just because MOST paintball teams have a PLAYER who is the captain and does the coaching doesn't mean that it's the best way to do it. You had a coach in track and cross country, right? If you can't get a faculty member, try and enlist the help of a player or field owner or someone else from your area. Practice against an Am team in your area a lot? Ask someone on that team with a good amount of experience and a good temprament if they'd be your coach.
If you can't do that, you may just have to stage a popular revolt. I was tournament captain at the University of Illinois for a semester - but not because I was the best player on the team (I'm not sure I was even close), but because I was the guy who made the reservations, paid the registration, made sure people were getting to practice, recruited new members, and dealt with the politics of picking who played on which of our teams (we had 3 at the time, I think UofI is up to 5 now.) Coaching? Nobody on our team did that, that's what the local Am teams were for, along with our advisor.
The team I play on now, I'm probably the most experienced player (which is not to be confused with the best player, as I'm horrendously out of practice and new to the team so I havn't seen a lot of the other guys play much.) But I'm also not the captain. Our captain is a guy who knows everyone on the team fairly well, is charged with all the areas of responsibility, and makes all the decisions, and he does all of that well. Coaching is pretty evenly split amongst everyone; we all know we're not perfect and are looking for what our teammates see we can do better.
In the long run, any player who thinks they're above criticism should be tossed. I don't care WHO you are, there's always room for improvement, and if someone has decided they don't need to improve anymore they've just made themselves a liability.
What school do you play for, if you don't mind me asking? You can drop me an email at [email protected] if you don't want to post it - maybe I can just smack your captain upside the head directly and save you the trouble.
- Chris
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