Locked, loaded and ready to have fun, the Cal State Long Beach club paintball team headed into Florida on Tuesday in hopes of defending their championship title.
Fifteen team members left for Lakeland, Fla., to compete in the National College Paintball Association (NCPA) College Paintball National Championships, which starts Friday and runs through Sunday, according to club team President and sophomore pre-business major Christian Jones.
CSULB won the 2012 Class A championships by defeating the University of Nebraska at Omaha, according to Team Captain Jordan Tsai, a senior exercise science major. The team came up just short of a title the previous two years, Tsai said.
Tsai said the team believes it has what it takes to repeat its success at championships.
“I don’t want to promise anything, but our team looks stronger than ever,” Tsai said. “If we don’t win, it will probably be our own fault.”
Jones said he has the same confidence in the team.
“We’ve been practicing more than we have any of the other years,” Jones said. “I feel really, really good because the same team that went last year is going this year, minus one player.”
CSULB will begin playing on Friday with three matches against Texas A&M University, the University of Tennessee and Kennesaw State University, according to the NCPA website. Their results will determine any future games.
However, Jones and Tsai said Liberty University, the University of Connecticut and Florida Atlantic University are expected to be some of their tougher opponents.
“We don’t really have any rivalries that stand out because we treat everyone as a potential winner,” Tsai said. “Every match for us is a finals game.”
The team tries to hold practice at least once a month at Action Star Games Paintball Park in Colton, Calif., Jones said. However, the team has ramped up practice to once a week the past two months in preparation for nationals, as well as team cardio workouts three times a week, according to Tsai.
Games can be watched all weekend at www.paintballaccess.com, and the schedule and results can be found on the NCPA website.