COLLEGE NATIONALS REPORT: ILL State takes 2nd!! [VERY LONG]

[SeeK]

I'm surprised that it took you this long to form a team down there but the longer term goal of graduating is more important.

Sorry I missed watching more games. I just happened to be at CPX to play with some guys from work. The early games were different from the normal tourneys since the players I saw called themselves out. That's the really nice thing about the college teams.

If you ever get the chance to watch them play do it. This is the way it should be done.

[demonguy8]

Originally posted by Oddball
I was there playing on the SIU A team. We didn't do as good as we had hoped but considering we had never played together as a team before and for 3 of us it was our first toury ever, we didn't do too bad. Only got one hang in the 4 games of the prelims but did great in the remaining games in the losers bracket getting a hang in each of our 3 games.

The game that Demonguy8 talked about earlier, their first game on the losers bracket, must have been against our B team. They lost to a team that played a man down with out getting even one elimination. That doubled their overall score to 8 since they only got one actually kill in the whole toury, and that was on the break of a game. It was all their first tounry and for 2 guys, the first time playing paintball.

Overall I had a great time. The paint shot great, we got Inferno, and was a really good deal. A few guys got paint to bring back to school since it was cheap.

As for what was said at the captains meeting in the morning, the question was asked if they could shoot thru the bunkers, not run though them. The question was asked, I assume, because of the hyperball fields and the holes in the bunkers.

Since I only got one semster left, this was most likely my first and last college nationals, but look out for SIU next year. I will have all Fall semster to form a good tourny team from the club.

I actually dont think the game was against your school, since I dont remember playing ANY siu teams.. but the game description sounds right so maybe? I THINK it was against JHU or something (unless we played them earlier in the day in whichcase it was probably SIUB)... I know the second game was vs Northern(or NIU for those that like intials)

At any rate.. I hope your guys had a good time/experience, it being their first day/tourney and all. And ITS AWSOME that our state has 5 college teams now! (ISU, UofI, Northern, Southern, and Weslyan). How cool would it be to have 5 IL teams take the top 5 national spots hehe (ISU taking 1st of course )? I look forward to seeing you guys get bigger and becoming another powerhouse IL team in the future as you get some of the newers guys more experienced. Maybe we can even practice/scrimmage our teams some time?

[cphilip]

Originally posted by demonguy8
With the current rules/way the NCPA has the paintcheck rule setup,I dont see why a person would ever want to call a paintcheck for an unobvious hit when its the same 25 point penalty for playing on as if he did call paintcheck and then fired, especially when the reff wont come running over if he doesnt call paintcheck.. its rediculus to punish a player so severly for trying to play "honest" and to encourage shady play such as this..

1st: I believe the reff is doing or has done their job wrong to warrent a nuetral call. Admitably thought, noones perfect and can see every angle at every second so I understand why there is such a call in the sport.

OK I went and checked the current NPPL rules and if you were using them then you are correct to some degree but your putting the entire responsibility to check such hits on the Ref and it is not so. But I have no idea what NCPA is using. Under NPPL The Ref is not responsible for checking...Your team mates are. I will quote both of them and you will see were the grey area is. So I see where you get your argument from and it is a valid one to a big degree. Niether side is totaly correct and my argument is not either. But lets look at it. By the way your assumptions are fairly common ones and in a lot of cases it is indeed played the way you say. But the rules allow for what went on there. Let me explain....

Here is the current ruling on that and its under "Obvious hits" as I thought but it does allow playing on IF he calls for paint check IMMEDIATELY and his teamates check him (or if a ref does).. It is the teamates responsibility under this rule to check. Not the ref. If you end up calling a Ref and he does perform that for you it is supposedly after a teamate is not available. But its up to the ref. He could call it either way. And in your situation up top there was no other teamate.

10.06. Players with obvious hits in areas which are not easily verifiable, such as the back, may continue
to play, but must immediately call on a teammate who can easily verify whether or not the paintball broke to indicate whether or not such player was eliminated. The teammate must respond immediately, and if the hit player was eliminated, he must cease play, signal his elimination and exit the field pursuant to the provisions of this Section 10.0. Failure to call on such teammate for verification or failure of such teammate to respond immediately constitutes playing on by the hit player. If no such teammate is available for verification, such player may continue to play, but must immediately call for a paint check by a field judge. Failure to call for such a paint check immediately will constitute playing on by such
player.


Now right there is the strength of the argument in your situation that you described. Very valid complaint for sure as it seems the intent was to allow you to play on! but!

...it should be noted that a Ref does not have to perform a paintcheck when called for. It's your teamates responsibility to do it if its hard to verify. So it entirely depends on what went on during the paint check. It could go either way. If you have a hit and call paintcheck and your teamates do not verify and the Ref finds a hit he can indeed consider it playing on. Or he could consider it a non verifiable. Here is the "Paint Check" rules:

PAINT CHECKS
9.0 WHEN PERFORMED
9.01. Paint checks are performed by judges for the purpose of determining if a paintball has broken on and marked a player.
9.02. Paint checks are performed by a judge when the judge has observed a player taking fire, when fire is directed into an area occupied by a player that the judge cannot directly observe, when the physical location on which a paintball may have broken is not visible to the judge, or when the judge is directed to do so by another judge.
9.03. Judges may, but are under no obligation to, make a paint check after a player has requested one.

So you are more apt to get the playing on call if you are being checked by the ref as he may be responding to what he saw and not your call for paintcheck. Just because you holler it out does not mean he is not about to come look anyway after he saw something hit you. And you could just call paintcheck to cover your behind after you felt a hit and saw him coming and not realy make an effort to look. The ref must make a judgement. But you see he could call it either way?


Now as to the neutral call... No it is not him not doing his job...UNLESS he does not follow the rules. And they say he should make every effort NOT to call a player neutral. But sometimes its unavoidable. But its not something you want to do. Here is the neutrality rules:

9.1 NEUTRALITY
9.11. Judges will make every effort to perform a paint check without calling a player neutral. However,
a judge, at his discretion, may declare a player neutral.
9.12. No flag carrier will ever be stopped and declared neutral for the purposes of performing a paint
check.
9.13. A judge calling a player neutral will indicate the same to all players on the field by standing over
the player, shouting, "Neutral" and holding his arms above his head or waving his arms.
9.14. A player declared neutral cannot be eliminated from the game or moved on, either by opposing
team members or his own teammates, while in the state of neutrality.
9.15. A judge may move a neutral player's equipment and or request that such player expose additional
areas for examination.
9.16. Players not declared neutral may be eliminated while being checked.

Not realy clear cut... except for these specifics: that a Ref does not have to paintcheck you just because you call for one. It's your or your teamates responsibility to paintcheck "Obvious Hits" that are " Self unverifiable" and you can play on according to the rules as its not automatic but you risk a judgement of the ref one way or the other if you do. And he can indeed consider that you were playing on if he feels you could have verified it. Or that your call for paintcheck was late or diversionary.

Not sure that was what happened at all but it is a correct interpretation to call playing on if the situation warrants it. It would not be if it did not. Interesting?

[cphilip]

Well seems the NCPA's rules are somewhat different although similarly based...

NCPA:



And

or feel

Interesting!!!! So a hit that makes you call paintcheck is an "Obvious Hit" (because he felt it and so called paintcheck) but prehaps might be unverifiable by that player and no real specific terminology to address that (well there is the feeling for it thing) other than 10.0.4 which says he is playing on here! No judgement call by the ref and no responsibility to the Team mates either for verification.... Hmmmm.... Needs some work eh?

You can find them here

[cphilip]

Again I fully agree. And under all rules it seems if you know you were hit you should assume it broke until proven otherwise and so taking cover and ceasing fire and calling paintcheck would be preferable to playing one while waiting on paintcheck. If you take the chance then you pay the piper if your wrong. It makes sense to me.

Good thing to bring this out too as this is something that is commonly ignored and should be evenly decided and enforced. In all versions of the rules. Thats my opinion.

[ezrunner]

Clemson

Yeah, this was Clemson's first strike at nationals.

We had a long ride both ways but it was a lot of phun.

Meeting psychoballer was cool, wish we had more time to party and it woula been nice if an industry giant had brought out some hotties for pics

I mean we have some in the leauge (Illinois )

Yeah, we didn't bring our A game, that being said, we did show up. Some things could have been done differently but hey, all considered we got all the cars back to SC in one piece and we had $60.00 left from the event so the guys didn't have to spend like they did at world cup.

Props to the good teams, and gr33t5 to all.

We had a great time and pulled some sillyness w/ LSU (Go Tigers!) We share a mascot w/ our breathren from the bayou.

I shot my race merlin all day (AKA Gun, it rocks) and i finally tested my speed w/ the gun. On a chrono I pull a consistent 11bps w/ my finger and if you setup trigger bounce it runs wide open which is 13 now because of the settings I'm using.

I did not field the Xmag mainly because if I broke it I would have cried

If it had been my gun I would have been playing it all day. I did not want to scractch it on the field. The field surface was a fine pebble spread.

-rob

[IMP55]

All I have to say is that I had an awesome time at Nationals. I play for UW-Whitewater. I think we played some really great teams and all of our games went really smooth. The reffing was some of the better reffing I've had. Props to AGD Pride and props to all the great teams! I have one question though. What was with that tiny airball field on the other side of the hyperball? I'm not saying I didn't like it, as a matter of fact we won the one game we played on it. It just seemed like it was way too small for a 5 man. On the other hand, the paint was good, Whitewater used Big Balls all day and it worked great! I had a blast and will definately do it again. also I can't wait to see all of the final results and updated rankings.

[raehl]

The 3rd Airball Field

Ok, so the original game plan had been to get an airball field from one of the manufacturers. Unfortunately due to other events in the Midwest this past weekend, none were available, and I found this out on Wednesday I think. I had already decided that we definitely needed 5 fields, and not having a 3rd airball field would mean we'd be playing mounds - which we had made a point of telling people we would due do in light of some negative feedback last year.

So I started calling everyone I knew who had an airball field. I had two lined up in about 20 minutes, one in MN and one in IL from Sudden Impact near Bloomington, who also was sending two of the reffing teams (Orbital and Psycho Circus). The caveat was they only had 15 bunkers, but CPX had 4 more to make 19, which is typical 5-man size.

Saturday morning it turned out that mice had eaten through CPX's 4 bunkers, so we had to set up the field with 15. It was definitely a small field, but watching a few games on it the feeling I got was that if you walked the field right, you had a good shot at winning your games. You just had to get out there and make the right stuff happen. If you didn't walk the field right and just tried to play it you'd definitely get eaten up by a team who walked onto the field with a solid game plan.


- Chris

[XR4]

MTU

Michigan Tech made an appearance too. For the record, we still had snow on our field when we left so none of us had played since November. That said, we only missed the first cut by 3 points.

A few of you saw my Ghetto e-mag. Thanks to Timmy for the one right side e-mag grip so I could remove a peice of duct tape from my gun. All 5 of our e-mags sported his sexy TL-63 trigger.

We had a great time, Stibbo invented a new drinking game, Edward 40-hands. General told a cop we was staying at the hilton while doing his best to stand up straight, and Hills (ah137 on AO) had some personals exit the hotel window.

This was the smoothest run nationals by far, although we still need more people running the event off the field.

I'll have pics in a few days. I hope the rest of you also have more intersting stories of the past weekend. I know I'll remember other things than the rules.

Out,
XR

[ah137]

Yeah, the funny thing is I didn't even know it happened. I was just told. But nonetheless a lot of my clothing was wet, who knows why? We might have made finals if general (the only one on the team with a cocker) hadn't gotten a hot gun penalty. All and all I had a great time, and we did kick GVSU butt, ha ha ha fuzzy!! And the local bars where entertaining.

~Later Hills


p.s. cphilip, I did see your X-mag, not impressed at all!! j/k

[spantol]

Oh, hell, a little tangent never hurt anyone.

demonguy: That's called gamesmanship, and, aside from being just wretched form, seems entirely contrary to the NCPA's ideals (as I understand them, anyway). Such an action might not be explicitly prohibited, but I can't imagine that you'd argue it to be an ethically valid course of action--or can you?

In an ideal world, there'd only need to be two rules:

1 - Don't be a jerk
2 - Have fun.

It's the "competitive" spirit outlined in previous posts makes necessary anything more.

[cphilip]

Well I think Deamon guy has a very valid point. It is not so clear cut how to play on or how to call that. I would opt more like NPPL states theirs where the ref can judge the intent of the playing on and the inablility to verify and the timing of the paintcheck call. At least for moment he can consider it. As the NCPA rules are now its very unclear if he ever CAN consider the circumstance where it may indeed not be a penalty.

[cphilip]

Hmmm...I think NPPL rules work. It's the judges and refs not knowing them or enforcing them that seems to be their problems. And I know that NCPA rules work pretty darn well but I see a few gaps in them. For instance there is no onus on the team to make and be responsible for paintchecks in those situations. Its all left to the refs. That inclusion I think is worthy. And there is no clear allowance for the Ref to not honor a paintcheck. That could be clearer. I wouldn't call the NCPA rules I just read a grand departure from NPPL rules. On the contrary. They appear to me to be a loser set of NPPL rules in a more simplistic lay out. I do not see where you conclude they are radicaly superior at all. I think NCPA works because of the good people involved...not the rules.

[cphilip]

YeP! thats the way it is and one things for sure they were all playing under that same rules so they were all under that same obligation. So its fair for all if thems is the rules!

One thing that was left off is your NCPA rules of "Obvious hits" vs "Non Obvious". And I posted them earlier.

[cphilip]

Well as I see it there is no way to not leave it to a judgement. It looks like the NCPA made it as clear cut "always" is for that reason. And perhaps for the reason in that when things are judged they can often be judged differently and unfairly even. The NPPL seems to have followed that for the most part but left it a little more lee way to determine what was "Playing on Deliberately" and "Playing on accidently and without devious intent". As I said earlier there should be an onus on the player and there is in both sets of rules. More so on the team in the NPPL but same thing realy. Now mind you those are hard things to judge and can be dangerous to not call close. And thats Chris's point. Why not take that inconsistency out of the game? And thats a good argument. But your point is that there are a few (mind you very few) situations where playing on is inadvertant and should be an out but not a penalty automaticaly acessed. The problem is there is no way to write that rule so as to give clear guidance to the ref as to when to make that judgement and so human error will be inclusive of that call. Subject to the ultimate refs ok. Thats what Chris is saying. And I fear I have not seen it any better written than NPPL does. But yet we know that still is not perfect. So as much as I can see BOTH of your points I do not realy have an answer for you. I think Chris will tell you that is why they did it that way. So it was clear cut and no interpretations could lead to unfairness and inconsistencies between officiating crews. Seems the safest thing to do is to tuck in and wait for a check. But I do not know how it could be written so as to allow a single player to wait on check without involving the refing crew in some judgement calls. That would be the only alternative. This is one of them Dammed if you do and Dammed if you don't things I am afraid....