Zonie-land

Well I'm finally rested up enough after PHX to give everyone the low-down.

For those who were wondering about my health, I'm perfectly fine. After being run-over by Mykel "the train" Kovar, all it ended being was a few bruised ribs. I still have no recollection of what happened so if you have video that would be awesome. For those who didn't see it, I was running down a shock player and got shot. I immediately took a few steps to the left, right in the way of Mykel who was also running down the same guy. He ran my ass over and from I can tell I hit my gun or loader into my chest.

Now on to our performance....

Coming into this tournament expect a win would've been a little far stretched. With only 4 returning players from last year and 3 completely new guys to our system, a win would've been hard to come by. What I did expect coming into this tournament is getting these guys some experience and confidence, and that's exactly what did happen.

Our first match against XSV is what you look for in the start of the year. A solid win with a few mistakes to improve on for the next match. We executed everything we set out to do against them and it worked. Our new guys stepped up and played some real good ball against what will become a very competitive team. I think the mental aspect is the hardest part for new players to overcome. Realizing that tournament paintball against the likes of XSV and the Russians is just like practice back home. What our guys accomplished was just that. We went out there and just played good paintball, it didn't matter who was on the other side of the field, we dictated how that match was played out. Unfortunately, we didn't do that against the Russians. As easy as it is to say we got penalties, we never once had control of that match or any game in it. They make very little mistakes and if you're not able to capitalize off them, then you'll never beat them....all while not making any mistakes yourself.

I guess that leaves us with our last match against shock. As much as I hate losing, this is probably one of the best group of guys to lose too. They recently experience what X-factor has been going through, players giving up on your organization for "greener" pastures. Too bad those greener pastured ended up looking like most of Arizona this weekend for 'em. With that being said, I'll get into the nitty gritty details. David Griffin, our super coach, worked it out and realized that if we went into overtime with shock, we'd both make it through. That's a hard ticket to pass up. Jeremy also realized this and a talk between Myself, Dave, and Jeremy took place. We all agreed that doing something like this was no good for either team and the best thing to do was fight to the death.

Now I'm sure some people will think differently but that is the God honest truth. If you actually saw the match that ensued you'd agree with me. No one threw that game or manipulated it in anyway. We really did run up a 6-2 lead on shock and then blow it all the way to the overtime point. One thing about shock is they got a lot of fight, especially after losing Drew and picking up the heart and soul of the AA's (Tim M.). In the end we blew a 4 point lead and have no one else to blame but ourselves. We could've finished that game anyone of those points and there wouldn't have been this big dark cloud that now hangs over the PSP.

After shock did manage to come back those 4 points, we set up to play the OT point and play to win. As the clock was counting down the time stopped at :30. What stopped that clock was one team arguing that the rules had changed and that there was no such thing as an overtime point anymore to save their quite desperate chance at making it to Sunday. Apparently an e-mail was sent out to the teams (which we never got) suggesting a rule change be made Monday before the event. Now that the rule would actually have an effect, it was changed :30 before we played shock for the final point. Only a handful of teams had gotten this said e-mail and not even Tony knew about the rule until this point (reason for the delay). Hopefully this "lack of communication" is not a sign of things to come from the PSP. In the end, I'm quickly learning there's only a handful of good people left in this sport and I respect them tremendously for what they stand for.

With that outta the way, I'd like to say congrats to Impact and Aftershock. I find it kinda ironic that a last minute rule change let in the team that would go on to win the tournament. Guess it just gives you a clue to how this year will play out. I know speaking with Josh Davey before one of their matches that he was hesitant to play PSP this year with his job, but I'm sure we'll be seeing more of him with their recent performance. Shock also finished the highest they ever have and have shown they'll be a contender for the top spot for this next year to come.

Straight from the horse's mouth....