Paintball Media Magazine October 2022 | Page 29

Introduction by John Amodea

You almost can ’ t talk about professional paintball without taking about Chicago . Some of the best pro or pro / am paintball events in history have taken place in Chicago . The National Survival Game ( NSG ) held the first-ever paintball tournament in Chicago in the mid- 1980s . The Lively Series with Jim Lively and Sam Caldwell held their own version of the Windy City Open for years in the mid-to-late-80s in Chicago . And Chicago was a yearly stop on the NPPL ( National Professional Paintball League ) tour throughout the 1990s . Later the PSP would bring its pro / am tour to Chicago every year . And here we are nearly four decades after the first Chicago paintball event with the National Xball League , back in Chicago for another NXL event .
And the Chicago area has also produced some of the best paintball players in the world . Players like Mike Bruno , Renick Miller , Gary Noblett , Nick Slowiak , Markus Neilson and literally hundreds of others that have cut their teeth at the Badlandz or other Chicago area fields . And teams like Aftershock , Swarm , The Enemy , Scream ( 1980s ), Team Fox and many more call or called the Chicagolands their home . And I haven ’ t mentioned the amazing fields like Challenge Park Xtreme , Fox Paintball , Blastcamp , Badlandz and again , many more . And Wayne Dollack , Viper and other to-notch scenario game promoters ran games in Chicago , including the famous William Shatner games .
Photo By John McGloughlin www . paintball . media
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