Starting and Maintaining a Team in the Sport of Paintball (part 2)

Running Drills in the sport of paintball is vital to the success of any team. You don't think the pro teams just stumble onto the field do you? Of course not. They practice their skills both as an individual and as a team. There is so much more to the game of paintball than simply showing up at the field and shooting your paintball marker.

When my team first came together, we played on Saturday mornings and thought we were pretty good. So good in fact, that we signed up for a tournament confident that we would destroy the competition. Yeah right, we got our butts handed to us in that first tournament. We never wanted to perform like that again so we decided to get serious. We would practice hard, and come back at the end of the season to see if all of our hard work had payed off. We practiced once a week that first summer and when September came around, we signed up for another tournament. We were sure we would do much better than we had in our first attempt, and we did. Our team took fifth out of about 18 teams that showed up that day. We were pleased, but sure we could do even better. So we decided to develop some drills to help hone our skills.

Incorporating drills into your teams paintball practice :

First off, my paintball team and I decided that the best way to get the most out of each paintball practice was to divide each of our practices into two parts, paintball drills and paintball play. The paintball drills would be used to work on a players weaknesses as well as enhance their strengths. Once the team is done with the paintball drills, we split up and play a few real games of paintball to use what we learned in a real situation. The beauty of having many players on your paintball team is that you can decide who will be playing the next tournament weeks ahead of time. Doing this allows them to practice together for the month or so leading up to the paintball tournament. The rest of the team should be switched around and interchanged with one another during this time to challenge those who will be playing the tournament.

When developing a drill for your paintball team, ask yourself a few questions.

1. What are each players strengths?
2. What are each players weaknesses?
3. What is each players position? (front, middle, back, snake)
4. What are each players responsibilities on the field?

Once these questions are answered it is far easier to develop team drills as well as drills that will hone each players strengths and weaknesses.

Coming up in the next chapter of Starting and Maintaining a Team in the Sport of Paintball (part 3) :
Front man Drills - Front man Drill 1: Moving Under Fire