April Training & The Start of REC

First of all sorry for the slow update - I know people out there are constantly refreshing this page waiting for the next bite of my life.. probably. I've been helping my buddy and teammate, Parkey, by tidying up some of the copy on his website: http://www.cuttingedgecarbon.co.uk/ - check it out, there's some pretty flash stuff on there and he's not even paying me to plug it for him.. Upon saying that I do want to point out that unlike some so-called 'credible' outlets, I am actually open to bribery and will endorse your product for cash, even if I don't believe in it. Man's gotta eat.

April 12-13th

Most teams would have been taking a breather after the first leg of the millennium-series, but Reading Entity were up at Cribbs for a 2-days of skills this weekend. We had also openly invited players to join us for the weekend so they can look to practice with us as part of our new project: REC (Reading Entity Cribbs). 

We are creating this team as we do know that as time goes on we will lose players as real life catches up with people, we know we wont have Liam next year who has been a great pick up for us on the snake side of the field and university is catching up with some of the other guys. A lot of teams seem to acquire players from other teams, however the South-West isn't (yet) a hotbed of up and coming talent for us to pick players of the caliber we desire. Therefore we have decided to create this team as a training squad that will train with the main team as often as they can. This year we have told players looking to join that they should stay with their current teams (if they're playing elsewhere) for tournament experience, however train with us as often as they can. Next year we intend for REC to be a competitive team in it's own right, with the most dedicated players earning spins with the first team at CPPS / Major tournaments when they are ready.

It was good to see some eager faces turn up and we practiced mainly gunskills - snapshooting, holding/aggression drills and 2v2s up the teabags.

We did play a couple points amongst ourselves too!

It was a refreshing change to work on some technical skills as for the past 5-6 weekends straight I was either with Entity scrimming against the Firm, playing in Rome and the CPPS as well as scrimming with the Firm and playing St Tropez with them. Whilst I do feel that game experience is the one element I need the most, it is still important to stay fresh with your skills.

For some reason I was shaved. That wasn't in the schedule.

2 cases shot each day so that makes 4 for the weekend!

April 20-21st

This bank holiday weekend I was going to attempt doing a 4-dayer, however there were some big developments that came up. First off our lovely hosts at Cribbs Pro Paintball Centre had gotten themselves a brand new Mills field! The ladies GB team had booked the Saturday as a private day so unfortunately I couldn't go and play, but also we celebrated the inaugural 2014 Apple Tree Cottage barbecue at my place on Friday which couldn't really be missed.

Like seriously, it couldn't be missed as I posted pictures all over facebook. I'm not sorry, I got naked and had a lot of fun.

Too much fun! Note: I am not endorsed by Henniker *cough* yet, I just like the hat.

So Sunday we went up and there was a good crowd of people to train with. Some of the new members of the Nexus family were up and so we gave them a few scrims on the new field on the Bitburg layout that we will be playing at CPPS this weekend coming. 

Might have been better to take the picture before pushing the Medusas over..

The layout seems fun, I didn't get challenged much moving up the teabag side but I'm sure the scrim session next Saturday before the tournament will set me straight. The snake is almost in a straight line, should be some interesting battles on the wire.. I'm excited to see how it pans out this round as it will be the first time seeing the snake side looking relatively normal and without any coaching!

Anyway Sunday was used for a bit of scrimming and I used 2 cases, the weather was a bit windy however which was a shame.

Monday we focused more on skills and breaking down the field. Starting off with some snap practice and then moving onto some 1v1 / 2v2 snake dominance drills as well as some 2v2s on the teabag side to get a grasp of each side of the field. I then finished the day with what we call a gauntlet. I'm going to come back with some more articles regarding training ideas after the CPPS this weekend and it's write up.

I shot 1.5 boxes on Monday so that means 3.5 cases for this weekend and 4 cases last weekend, so 13,000 which boosts my running total to 67,000! Getting closer to that 100k. CPPS is coming up so hopefully we'll be a lot closer!

CPPS

Before I go, a quick collection of my thoughts for CPPS coming up: Our group is:

Lethal Bizzle
Reloaded Naughty Bullets
& Stoke Quest AD

To be fair we haven't played any of these teams but as we have learnt over the past couple of years, we aren't going to underestimate anyone we play. When you do that the paintball gods don't smile upon you!

I'm 'modestly confident' though, everyone seems up for winning the event and we haven't taken our foot off the throttle.