Paintball Magazine Paintball.Media Magazine October 2019 | Page 19

The National Xball League held its fourth
event of the 2019 season this mid-September
at the familiar Chicago Gaelic Park just south
of the Windy City. The Chicago Open drew
208 teams from all parts of the U.S., playing
in a variety of divisions and levels from Xball
to Three-Man, Five-Man and Ten-Man and
novice to professional. The vendor village
was active and all of the regular movers
and shakers were present including Planet
Eclipse, GI Sportz, HK, Virtue Paintball,
Proshar, Luxe and others. Immortal Air, based
in Illinois were in attendance and busy.
It’s been quite a ride through four events this
2019 season in the National Xball League.
In the first three events we’ve seen three
different professional winners: Edmonton
Impact, Moscow Red Legion and San
Antonio X-Factor. We’ve seen San Diego
Aftermath move up to the professional ranks,
finish a very respectable third place in their
first event (Vegas), then completely crash
with 17th place in Texas and 18th place in
Philadelphia. After their win in Vegas we’ve
seen Edmonton Impact miss the pro finals in
the next two event—something they’ve not
done even one time in years. We’ve seen the
maturity of ac: Dallas as a pro team. We’ve
seen the consistency Houston Heat bring
with each event and we’ve seen the classic
franchises like the Ironmen, New York Xtreme
and Infamous struggle. And we’re not done
yet. Welcome to professional paintball where
the top eight teams are closer in talent than
they have ever been before and the bottom
twelve teams are Lloyd Christmas with a one
in a million chance to win any given event.
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