UC Irvine’s New Paintball Club

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Kyle Nagao, formerly of the United States Naval Academy where he participated in East Coast paintball competitions, heads up the UCI Paintball club. For those of us who might not get out often, Nagao agrees that playing paintball is like playing the first person shooter Counterstrike. The allusion works especially well for him since he prefers fast-paced Speedball to the slow, hide-and-seek style of paintball in hilly and wooded areas. Speedball, a form of Paintball in which long stretches of flat ground are littered with obstacles – inflatable bunkers, plastic sheets, old sewer tubes, and concrete barriers – provides an exciting gaming environment. Describing his first taste of speedball, Nagao confides that, \”the adrenaline rush and everything like that was just awesome.\” Players who don\’t actively position themselves get the Kyle guarantee of being \”found and targeted.\” To avoid this, he hopes to instill specific skills in his unit. \”There\’s something called snap shooting,\” said Nagao, \”where you get behind your bunker with a barrier in front of you, take a couple of shots, and then pop back in.\” The shoot and hide tactic forms the heart of Speedball, and its implementation allows its player to feel the ever-cherished adrenaline rush. Nagao\’s treatment of team building is more brisk than his treatment of the game. The rag-tag army he pulled together off online message boards managed its way into third place at the college division of the National Professional Paintball League. \”It was our first time meeting each other too, so that was very surprising that we placed,\” Nagao said. Though a competitive game, paintball is open to people of all skill levels. \”[Newcomers] don\’t have to have any experience whatsoever. A couple of people on our team just started paint balling within the past year … just as long as they\’re willing to dedicate [the] time and effort required to become a better paintball player.\” Between running drills, intra-team scrimmages, and field corrections, Nagao hopes to whip up a strong paint balling team. Outside of practice, Kyle works to foster a feeling of family into his team. By nurturing warmth amongst teammates, he hopes to develop the trust that is necessary to win games. \”We go out and have dinner and just hang out as a team and try to get that family in, \” said Nagao, \”You know, once you\’re like that family, its so much easier to compete out there because its not just another student at school; its, you know, your buddy.\” Unfortunately, covering the cost of participating in this sport is not easily done. \”Doing all those things we\’ve cut the costs down for practice to just the cost of paint which is twenty bucks a box,\” said Nagao. Furthermore, the club intends to hold some fundraisers, pick up some donations and sponsor a food drive on campus this year to cover the costs of participating in competitions. Despite the youth of the UCI paintball club, it is expanding fairly rapidly. Nagao is working to procure small facilities on the UCI campus to execute small drills indoors, and is pushing for club sport status. That way, blasting paint can become more ingrained into the UCI way of life. But concerned parents have nothing to fear. \”They did a safety study of a whole bunch of different competitive sports and paint balling had the least injuries per one thousand participants out of any other sport, period,\” said Nagao. For more information on the club, visit their forum at http://chengd.proboards43.com/index.cgi

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