My name is Luke Williams. I am not an alcoholic but I do look like one.
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| Did someone say whiskey? |
This is my long winded and not-all-that-exciting-to-read-about story, which I thought I would post up to outline my paintball history for anyone who wants some background.
When I was 14 I got a job at my local paintball site and although I got a taste for tournament paintball, I was put off by the high cost, especially as I had to work the days events were held. I did manage to get one of my best friends into the game too, who carried on where I left off and ended up playing in an SPL squad!
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| I also wore girls clothes. I told people it was for charity. |
2011
I started playing again, using paid holiday and even taking unpaid days off to guest for teams playing in race-2 and race-4 events at the CPPS and the race-3 divisions down South at the super5ives. Some events I would even commit to playing a morning of race-2 followed by race-4 just so I could make the most of the little time I had to play.I guested with teams such as The Brotherhood; Evil Saints and Rival Kidz
On one occasion I guested for 2 struggling teams, running the snake every point in a race-2 format in the morning, before running the snake again, every single point played (we had 5 players in the squad) in the race-4 games in the afternoon. We lost a lot of games that afternoon and although I had the odd point where I could change the games and kill those key players whilst taking the paint away from the rest of my team, I got shot off the break and stabbed countless times. But I still wanted more.
At the fall of 2011 I landed a new job, where I am now, with a great salary, and near-perfect hours. I have to work half a saturday for half the Saturdays of the year, but I get a lot of flexibility in choosing which ones I do with a bit of notice.
Now I had the means and the time to play a lot more and guested the last round of the CPPS 2011 with team Snatch, a bunch of guys that I looked up to at my first KOTH tournament back at 14, who had pretty much the same guys playing that they did 5 years ago. I had a great round, I got a few kills and really enjoyed their dynamic, putting a lot of paint down the field gave me so much more room to breathe and think about what I was doing. At the end of the day we played a good game and Snatch kept their spot at 3rd of the division and I was invited to join them for the 2012 season.
I played a round or two of the super5ives winter series with a team called Double Vision. Contrary to what the name suggests, they aren't twice as good as the French SPL team.
2012
Jan 29th - Super5ives: To start the 2012 paintball season with a bang, I managed to break a toe in Prague in mid January. |
| It was sad. |
Even so I went to the first round of super5ives on the 29th and played with Double Vision, I had guested with them a time or two in the previous year but they were down a player and I fancied trying my hand in the back centre. We did alright if memory serves, but I shouldn't really have been playing. One of the refs told me I looked like a fish trying to swim on land just getting to back center, which was conveniently pint sized.
You can see me on the first picture of the album between/before games. I obviously wasn't photogenic enough for any ingame shots.
http://paintballpictures.co.uk/p872479012
I wasn't pretty.
Feb 12th - BOP Cup: I was still recovering from the broken toe and it seemed the team gathered some rust over the off season. We came 2nd overall to team Spank.
Mar 4th - CPPS rd 1: In a very strangely organized ranking system, we came 2nd in our 'section' of our division, with no play offs between these sections. I was still getting to grips with my game on a personal level as I was trying to bring myself up to the standard that surrounded me, but I had a few good games. We were beaten by Disruption Entourage and Laysick VIP, both played hard and had some very strong players in their squads. After this round I realized that enough was enough, and packed in smoking. I quit my 10-20 a day habit and replaced it with running as I found that a 21 year old without a weight problem shouldn't be panting after a 15m sprint.
During February, March & April I made the trip to Academy 49 in Hereford for a spot of training once or twice. working on some good old snapshooting and some running and gunning drills. I also went up on Saturday morning of CPPS rd 1 so I could get some extra practice in.
Apr 1st - I trained at the NPC site with a few guys, we mixed up with the Firm for a scrim or two, as well as some other teams like UK Elite and random players. It was a productive day and I learned to get lower whilst running.. The hard way
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| You can actually see the pain |
Apr 15th - Super5ives: I went down with a couple Snatch guys and a couple guys from Rampage. We came 2nd to Bristol Effect who were the only team to beat us, one of their players had pulled off a disgusting move, pulling off a 4 man run through when we had 5 alive.. winning them the game in a 2-2 match. On a personal level, I was keeping tighter to my bunkers, becoming a lot more aware of what was happening on the field and most importantly, I started looking a lot more photogenic.
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| Like some kind of Ninja or something. |
Apr 22nd - CPPS rd 2: Another 2nd place for Snatch. We were bested again by Disruption Entourage, however Laysick hadn't been so strong this time round and our division had been divided into 2 brackets, giving us a true 2nd place. This put us 2nd in the division overall. I was feeling like a much more important part of the team, I was working on my communication a lot more as lack of communication was what killed us at the last super5ives. Each tournament I play now, I am working on just improving 1 aspect of my game. I have a lot to learn and a lot that I need to work on, but I find nothing sinks in if I try to think of everything at once, but if I can improve one thing every time I play, I'm on the right path.
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| Today's was how to not look like I shat myself |
May 20th - Super5ives: Kitch introduced a 3 man tournament before the 5 man started back up. We decided in advance we were going to put 1 3 man team in which I was a part of, however we ended up with 2 teams on the day. We came 1st and 2nd, most importantly though, my team took the 1st. In the 5 man we were unbeaten all day.. We played against Bristol Effect who put my team last round to shame but this time we got our way and we took the 1st home. A message went round the team that evening and it was noted that people on the sidelines said my game stood out that day - from my perspective I felt like I had just held my own with my laning and gunfights whilst letting our snake players do the killing, but I suppose being a good team player isn't just about being that guy that shoots everyone, but also the guy that shoots his lanes, dominates his zone and puts some pressure on that other team.
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| You guys sort them out.. I'm just going to poke my bunker a bit. |
June 3rd - GB tryouts: I took my first trip to Bricketwood to have a crack at the GB tryouts. I went with no hope of making it onto the squad, just a chance to see how I compared to some of the best players in the country. I was definitely outplayed, I didn't get many kills and when I did make a good move into the diamond unnoticed, by the time I had actually put some paint on someone, another player had moved out to my corner and put the pressure on me before stabbing me a few moments later. What I did find however, was that I wasn't getting shot out of my bunker like an idiot and so I didn't feel completely out of my depth. I definitely learnt to play tighter.. I had to! It was inspiring to see what was basically Nexus 2011 come up and work as a team after so much time apart from the likes of Neil Campbell, Jason Wheeler and Clint Moore. I did notice that they just automatically crossed up with someone, whether it was a teammate on the other side of the field or the person one bunker away, providing a much harder formation to break.
June 9-10th - UKSM: I came up on Saturday to train with a couple kids that I had played with before from my area. Worked on my laning and off the break shooting and ironed out some weaknesses. On Sunday I played with their team, The Persians. We had trouble with our snake side all day and although I had been working on my lanes, I wasn't a veteran back player but I just happened to be the biggest guy on the team so I was lumped with rolling my gun at the back. Only when we changed up our game plan and I was given free reign to get into the doritos and win some games did we turn it around. I was left on my own a lot and so I learnt a bit more about 2,3&4v1's. Most of it being 'oww' but also about keeping my cool whilst letting them make the stupid moves. Also I found myself predicting the other team a lot more and using it to my advantage. One game after our snake side had pretty much dropped, I was busy trying to even up the game from where I was when I notice my back centre leaving as well. I instinctively put paint across the field to the snake side knowing that if I had shot out that back center myself, in their position, I would have got aggressive down that tape. Sure enough someone ran straight into my paint seconds after and it was all down to some kind of instinct that was starting to surface.
June 17th - CPPS rd 3: We had a very strong day and luckily for us Firm Academy beat DIsruption in the seeding and they must have been having a bad day because they placed 5th overall. In the top seed however, MH3 managed to finally beat us - after we had consistently beat them in the previous rounds and at one of the super5ives. We still took a point off them. However MH3 got beat by Firm academy, but also took a point from them. We had some long points and a difficult game against Firm academy, but in the final point I stepped up and got aggressive on the dorito side, tagging 3 of their players and winning the match. I had finally started to see the windows of opportunity open before me and had started to take advantage of them without getting too greedy. All 3 teams won a game 2-1 and lost the other in the same way, giving all 3 teams 1st place. As we were ahead of MH3 and Firm Academy on the overall standings and disruption ended up with 5th place on the day, this put us in 1st place for the tournament so far. We have to wait until September to fight to keep it that way. The scores have become very tight.
June 24th - Super5ives: I went down with the scratch team. There's not much to be said about this tournament for me, I made one or two good moves all day but overall I didn't feel like I was doing much. I did at a few points however make use of some dead space on the field to block out other players and get a shot on some others, which is something I haven't had much confidence to do in the past and I hope I can inject it into my game in the coming months without doing anything silly.
July 1st - I was hoping to get down to the mills for the first time on Saturday and see what it was all about but money is low this month (Holiday coming up next week). However I did use up some old paint at the walk-on the next day, discussing with some of the locals about perhaps trying to get a team together for a round of super5ives in the upcoming months to try inject some new blood into the tournament scene.
That brings us to now!
Thank fuck the boring part's done!
My future travels, thoughts and tournaments will be uploaded in a much easier to digest diary, blog, article, scripture type format.
