Collegiate League
Dating back to 1986, paintball has had a quiet corner of competition that made a tremendous impact on the growth of the sport and the industry through its heyday. Beginning with the formation of the first college paintball club at the United States Military Academy, a template for running a collegiate club was built, and other major universities followed suit, namely Penn State Paintball Association and Michigan Tech Paintball Club in 1991, and Purdue University Paintball Club the following year.
By 1994, clubs collaborated to organize the first Intercollegiate Tournament at Sherwood Forest in LaPorte, IN. At the center were Andy McGowan, Mike Sheldrick, and Alexander Rose of Carnigie Mellon University, Kao Wang and Jimmy Liang of Washington University, and Doug Seman from the University of Michigan. Schools also in attendence included Purdue University, West Virginia University, and Wright College in Chicago, and University of Michigan claimed the title of the tournament.
By 2000, the college league was beyond ready for an official structure, and that came when University of Illinois student and MICT III coorganizer Chris Raehl formed the National Collegiate Paintball Association. The first College National Championships would be held that year, at Paintfest in LaPorte, Indiana, and the Illini took home the crown at that event. The following year, the NCPA, led by Raehl, Mike Quinn of the NEIC, and David Shaw of the SEIC, collaborated to run the first College Paintball Season, with four conference events and a National Championships, including the first Great Plains Intercollegiate Conference and South-East Intercollegiate Conference events.
After a successful season, universities began investing their own athletic funds into the growth of the sport. www. paintball. media
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