Your Team Sucks !
Ok , I will admit that title is a bit of an attention grabber , but I had no idea how else to title this article . The other day , a friend and new player to paintball sent me a link to a paintball team and asked what I thought . I replied that he should avoid that team because it looks like it sucked . My friend replied “ Wow … Harsh ! You never talk like that . What makes these guys suck ?” That led to an hour-long conversation that I thought would make an excellent opinion piece … so let ’ s get after it , shall we ?
To start , let us define what a team in paintball is . There are two kinds of teams in paintball , rec teams and tournament teams . You can have a team that is both but usually in those teams the focus is on one style and they do not take the other style seriously . Regardless of which style of team you are on , there are two common traits which all great team have that are absolute . The teammates all share a common goal and the teammates like and respect each other . We will call this the “ Magic 2 ” and we will come back to this . If the Magic 2 is not there , the team will die sooner rather than later . Usually quite abruptly in a big public scene . ( More so now with social media ) Also , let us clarify that there is a difference between an organization and a team . If your team boasts a roster of hundreds , or even thousands , that is not a team . That is an organization . The squads within those organizations are teams , for the purpose of this article anyway .
The next thing I should clarify is what makes a team “ suck .” This has nothing to do with winning and losing to me . If you are passionate about the sport , out playing and enjoying time with your friends , that is winning in my book . That is a great team to be on . No what makes a team suck is infighting , drama , team politics and generally bad behavior . These teams do not tend to last long and generally ruin the enjoyment of the sport for everyone involved , including the people on the outside watching the team implode .
I hear you out there “ Pitter Patter Steve ! What made you say the team sucked from just a social media post ?”
Okay , okay … The first thing that got my hair up was the logo and the name . This sounds petty I know but the logo had red paint splats on it . Now this is a personal thing of mine , so I am sorry if I offend anyone , but I do not like paint splats in logos . Nobody outside the sport knows what the paint
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