Paintball Scholarships

It never occurred to me that someone could actually receive a college scholarship worth thousands of dollars for paintballing. Though I'd seen the paintball matches on ESPN on Saturday afternoons, it did not occur to me that this was a widely revered sport before last year, when I met a guy, who bragged about a scholarship he'd received. Firstly, I must say this guy, a scrawny five foot five kid with no facial hair nor muscles in his body, barely made it across the stage. He probably had the bare minimum GPA and I know for sure spent hours in credit recovery to make up for three years of laziness, but he got a full scholarship to go to a highly accredited university. For Paintballing!

Turns out, paintball scholarships aren't some nonsense that he made up to make it seem like he was going somewhere, which is what I thought. Indeed, extraordinary paintballing skills can give someone a very legitimate chance to go through college without paying a dime. Paintballing has become a collegiate sport with teams forming in universities from California to Kansas to Florida to Maine. With more and more paintball programs being created each year, universities are luring the best competitors to be on their teams with promises of free education.

The National Collegiate Paintball Association is an all-volunteer, non-profit organization created by college players that since its founding in 2000 has promoted the sport nationwide by helping participants in the university and high school level to participate in competition inexpensively while also improving their skill.

Consisting of two divisions Class AA, which is an open division that any college may compete in regional and national tournaments and Class A which is comprised of the best college paintball teams. According to Athletic Scholarships, NCPA has experienced a 65% annual membership increase each year since its humble beginnings in which only twenty teams were registered members. Now there are over 7,000 members and more than 250 schools represented in the NCPA, including University of Texas, University of Maryland, Georgia State University, University of Missouri, Florida International University, and many more.

Athletic Scholarship says increased popularity of paintballing with over 10 million paintball participants per year and a nationwide influx of cities creating paintball parks is largely accountable for this new scholarship opportunity. With universities scouting young shooters, televised tournaments, and a several national and international leagues to team up with the NCPA, paintballing has evolved into an upcoming sport.