Paintball IV's

ditpaintball

Played by over 15 million people in over 110 countries, the game of Paintball is taking on a whole new image in Ireland this week. This year’s All-Ireland Inter-Varsity Speedball competition will take place at Barrage Paintball, Ashbourne on Saturday April 14th, played for the first time on a tournament standard ‘Sup’Air Ball’ field. Organised by DIT with the assistance of the Irish Paintball Player’s Association (IPPA) and sponsored by AIB Student Banking, the event will be attended by teams from DIT, Griffith College Dublin, NUI Maynooth, Royal College of Surgeons, Trinity College Dublin, UCD and University of Limerick. 80 students in total will be competing and there will be 80,000 paintballs shot in just a few short hours.


‘We intend the event to promote paintball as a serious and competitive sport and also to introduce speedball to the general public’, says Richie Buttle, Chairman of the DIT Paintball Society ‘While the familiar image of paintball is a day spent romping around the woods, speedball is the tournament version of the game played on an open field or arena, with inflatable bunkers set up to provide cover for the competing teams as opposed to trees and bushes’.

As the name suggests, speedball is a far more energy intensive and athletic version of paintball than that played in the woods format, or Woodsball it is called. Games frequently last less than five minutes with players firing hundreds of paintballs during this time. All games have the basic premise of capturing a flag placed in the centre of the field and bringing it to the opposition’s base. Points are awarded for eliminating opposing players, capturing the flag and also for how many players a team has left ‘alive’ at the end of each game. A player is deemed out if they, or any equipment they bring on to the field, is hit or ‘marked’ by the opposition.


The Millennium Series, a European series of speedball tournaments, is paving the way for paintball development in Europe. In a few short years, the Millennium Series has been instrumental in the moving of the sport from the shade of the woods into the public domain of stadiums and now towards the world spotlight of television and mass media .With ever increasing media coverage and high profile locations such as Crystal Palace Stadium, National Stadium Lisbon, Barran Stadium Toulouse , paintball in Europe and in Ireland is definitely on the way up.

The competition begins 10.00am and will continue throughout the day. All are welcome to come and watch. Further information is available from the IPPA website, www.irish-paintball.net

The groups have been drawn by the head marshal, Baptiste. They are as follows:

Group 1
Trinity Avalanche
RSCI
UL
UCD

Group 2
Trinity Blizzard
DIT
GCD
NUMI

There will be a round robin in the group stage, each team playing a total of 6 matches in the group stage and then the two leaders on points, will play off in the final.



For more info, check out: http://www.irish-paintball.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=35

Husting and general banter: http://www.irish-paintball.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8594

Team colours: http://www.irish-paintball.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8576

ditpaintball

Bump

We won again, 2nd year in a row. Woot!

melekalikimaka

woot

Frankiestylee

Well done, well done. That'll teach 'em, teach 'em all!

mikeanywhere

Couple pics in this thread

All the pics of the day can be found here

Frankiestylee

How often do DIT (Aungier St. in particular) go paintballing? I keep forgetting how good it is but I really must join next year. I was gonna join this year but I completely missed the wee sign up days and then wasn't bothered. Is it mostly forest type stuff or is it this speedball lark? I've never played speedball but I can't imagine it being better then the aul sneakin' around trees fun.

ditpaintball

Aungier St. went on trips with us, Bolton St.as did CST and Mount Joy Square We did both woodsball trips and speedball trips.

Woodsball is great fun, but speedball is even better fun, its a faster game and easier to play, simpler rules etc.. Make sure and join a paintball society next year, if is a fact that they are some of the best societies in DIT

*head swell time*
Bolton St. Paintball Society
2004/5 Best New DIT Society
2004/5 Best Bolton St. Society

2005/6 Best Bolton St. Society
2005/6 All Ireland Speedball Champions

2006/7 Best Bolton St. S0ciety
2006/7 All Ireland Speedball Champions

So you know your onto a winner

mikeanywhere

Rich - question for ya..

Does a person only join at the signup days or can they get in on the action during the year too?? Is the paintball society restricted to members only when events are organised?

Apologies for the questions but notknowing how it works over here I thought I would ask.

ditpaintball

Valid questions.

You can join our society at any time through out the year. How ever membership is restricted to students and members of staff. This is because DIT subsidies some our activities, this funding which comes from the student in the end via fees.

Trinity allow non students to become a member alright.

Frankiestylee

From running a soc in Trinity for a year or so... you have to get special permission/count them seperately when it comes to none student members. Maybe this is differant for a sporting club as Trinity Rugby for example have a fair few non students etc... so it depends if Trinity Paintball is a club or a society.

ditpaintball

trinity paintball is a society

Frankiestylee

Then unless the rules have changed in the last year or so, they're not going to get any money for the non-members ... just like DIT. Bunch of engineers set it up if I remember correctly, good people, good people.

ion c

TCD has a very successful Paintball soc aka DUPSS (www.dupss.com) the actual founder was a BESS student along with some engineers.