Friday, May 09, 2008
Behind the Mask Produced the DESTINY Video from HB!!!
THANK YOU, Kalen, and Behind the Mask/Sunday Clothing!
THANK YOU, Kalen, and Behind the Mask/Sunday Clothing!
April 29, 2007, Mike and I were married in Las Vegas at Sunset Gardens. Vegas is where Mike’s dad has lived for almost 20 years with his wife, Kathy. We didn’t want to spend a ton of money on a wedding so we had it at a place that specialized in weddings. We also had friends come in to videotape the wedding for us and Chris Summers put together a sweet Youtube video for us. I can’t believe how fast a year goes by now that I’m not a teenager anymore. Man, I remember in high school how I would dream about the day high school would be over and I’d be going to college. College even seemed to take forever!
Mike and I started out as friends first back in 2001, but our first date was officially on February 14th (Valentine’s Day) in 2002. So, we’ve actually been living like a married couple for 6 years and I truly have found the love of my life, my soulmate. He’s so awesome, he stayed with me for most of the Vegas XPSL event and even helped me out by going with me to get supplies and copies and even loaded up the Registration equipment after it was all said and done! I love Mike Paxson. Forever.
For the first time, the XPSL brought their event to the Las Vegas Sports Park located at 1400 North Rampart Boulevard, Las Vegas, NV 89128. Over 120 teams competed at this event (See the list of teams by clicking here for the XPSL Las Vegas teams). In the Finals the match ups were Tombstone and Fuzion, Sacramento Ambition against SLT, Chims Kids and NXN, all of whom were fighting for the Championship in Novice, Intermediate, and Rookie Divisions. Fighting for the third place seats in Nov, Intermediate, and Rookie, respectively, were Acai Paintball who matched up against Jesters Outsiders, Turmoil by CC Paintball vs Poso Creek Posse, and Extreme Extractors vs B.I. - Delinquentz. Read MORE for the winners of each.
http://www.Spyder.TV, “the winning team from each of these will be awarded an all expenses paid trip to the Spyder Cup Grand Finale hosted at the NPPL World Championships in San Diego. These seven 3-man teams will compete for three brand new MAZDA3 hatchbacks! Over $10,000 in prizes will be awarded to the top placing teams at the regional events.”
Click here for the SCORES.
Will a paintball event like the XPSL return to Las Vegas? With the 122 teams that came to Vegas to compete, it could mean that there is a demand for more competitions to take place in Vegas, but hopefully by 2009, there will be an indoor facility that can host a 7-man event. Until then, we’ll see if paintball returns to Vegas. I’m hoping that it will considering how well this event ran, even with some of the difficulty in putting up the netting necessary to play on.
Illinois State University Redbirds took home the 2008 JT Sports College Paintball National Championship after winning against the University of California Anteaters in overtime. Final score was 7-6.
If you’re nearby, come on out to Central Florida Paintball in Lakeland and attend the 2008 JT Sports College Paintball National Championships tomorrow, Sunday, April 21st. The semi-finals and finals matches will be filmed for Fox College Sports to air during the second week of July.
For the fourth year in a row, I’ll be commentating alongside Matty Marshall at the JT Sports National Championships which will air on Fox Sports Net sometime in July. The event is taking place at Central Florida Paintball in Lakeland, Florida, this weekend (April 18-20). Click on READ MORE to get all the details about what took place on the first and second days of prelims and who’s playing in Sunday’s matches.
4/19/08, 530PM Report: The last match of the day was between Purdue and Ohio. Purdue University played their first match of the weekend since they chose not to play during the Friday games because they had a “bye”. They already had a seat in the quarter-finals and didn’t need to play. The teams that did play did so to have a better “seat” in the quarter-finals. Purdue managed to get the first point on the scoreboard against the Bobcats from Ohio, but Ohio then put four points in a row up on the board, making the score, 4-1 in Ohio’s favor. Purdue answered by putting up 2 additional points, score 4-3, but still were trailing by 1. Going into the second half, that’s when things got hectic. Purdue managed to get two major penalties, one right after the other, allowing Ohio to take away with the lead and put most of their points up on the scoreboard during the last three minutes in the match. Ohio had a couple of penalties of their own, but of the minor kind. However, one of those penalties was during the he last point. Ohio heard the call that the game was over, but apparently, Joe Mennan didn’t; he saw that there was still a player on Purdue’s side at the center-50. He shot him. Joe Meenan was suspended for the first 9-minutes of Ohio’s match up against Illinois State Redbirds. Final score, 11-6. Ohio has been here before, but never got this far at a National Championship. This is their second appearance as a Class A team.
In the match before Purdue and Ohio’s controversial one, it was the Tennessee Volunteers versus the University of Illinois Illini. Illinois is no stranger to the Top 4 bracket and wasn’t about to let Tennessee take away their hope to make it in again. Both teams got each a minor and a major penalty during the entire match, but Illinois capitalized better on the Volunteers error and took away the Volunteers chance to see themselves in the Top 4. Final score: 7-4.
Starting Sunday at 10AM, it’s Illinois State Redbirds vs Ohio. Then, at 12 noon, it’s Irvine versus Illinois.
4/19/08, 3PM Report: September 20, 2000, was the date of the first NCPA National Championships. In 2005, that marked the first year the NCPA nationally televised their College Paintball National Championships. The first two years (2005 & 2006), it aired on CSTV. Last year and here in 2008, it’s been the “JT Sports College Paintball National Championships” and will air during the second week of July.
Redbirds beat the Nittany Lions
I talked to Tyler Nehlig of Penn State and although he’s taking it nicely, considering, he’s very disappointed with the tremendous loss they took from Illinois State University Redbirds. He said, “They just stopped us from getting out to the tapes,” and so the Redbirds are the ones to put out Penn State Nittany Lions.
Final score of Penn State was 11-2.
Irvine continues to surprise, defeating the defending champs, UConn
Next game up was between new team to the Class A format, the Univ of California Irvine Anteaters and UConn. UConn was down by three points, then scored six points in a row, 6-3, then UCI came back and scored 4 points in a row all within 6 minutes. Final: 7-6. UConn were the 2006 and 2007 Champions and got knocked out by a rookie team to the Class A format. Earlier on Saturday, UCI managed to beat Maryland because of a major penalty assessed against Maryland that took place with just 2 seconds left on the clock with a tied score. Maryland’s Josh Emmanuel got called for playing on penalty and therefore, a major penalty was assessed giving UCI an automatic point on the board, final score was just a one-point difference.
History of the Number of Teams Competing
Brought out Class A (Like X-Ball) in 2005 (test year) and there were 6 teams that entered. NCPA had a sharp drop in team numbers n 5-man because of the introduction of Class A, and that’s most likely because alot of the Class AA (5-man) teams were going to the new format (Class A). In 2006, the NCPA doubled the number of Class A teams by half, going from 6 to 13 teams. Class AA/5-man teams saw a drop from 43 teams in 2004; in 2005, it went to 34, then to 25 teams in 2006 with that same number (25) in 2007. Now here in 2008, Class AA is back up to 41 teams.
There are about 32 events in the NCPA’s season. This event, the 2008 JT Sports College Paintball National Championships is the last event of the NCPA season.
CLASS AA (5-man) & High School Info
Class AA 5-man Scores
There are a total of 40 5-man (Class AA) and 10 High School 3-man Teams.
I’ve been so consumed by the Class A teams and doing on-camera stuff that I haven’t been keeping up on the 5-man teams, but if you click on the link above, the scores will tell a story.
4/19/08, 1PM Report: Four of the five fields are running here at CFP during the 2008 College Paintball National Championships with Class A, Class AA (5-man), and 3-man High School Teams have already taken the fields. The fifth field is the Finals field for tv and Fox College Sports will air two semi-final matches and the Finals match. Here in the Class A Playoff for Saturday, it’s single elimination, so if a team loses today, it will put them out for the rest of the event. The schedule and winners, so far, are as follows:
8AM: Penn State Univ. Nittany Lions put Drexel Univ. Dragons out of the running.
9AM: Univ of Maryland Terrapins lost to UC Irvine Anteaters
10AM: Univ of Illinois Illini defeated Army Black Knights
11AM: Illinois State University Redbirds beat West Virginia Mountaineers
1PM: Illinois State University Redbirds beat Penn State 11-2
2PM: Univ of Connecticut Huskies lost to Irvine 7-6
3PM: Univ. of TN Vols lost to Illinois4-7
4PM: Purdue Univ. Boilermakers lost to Ohio 6-11
We did our first day of filming today so Matty and did most of our, what they call, “Stand Ups”! Good times. “Welcome to the 2008 JT Sports College Paintball National Championships,” is what we said over and over again and at first, we would goof and say “JT USA” or “National Paintball College Championships” and get it a little turned around! We laughed it off to then get serious enough to get the line right!
4/18/08, Evening: There are a total of five fields that the NCPA will be conducting their National Championships on this weekend, and already, two fields ran the Class A matches. Class A is similar to the X-Ball format, but here in 2008, the NCPA didn’t change their format to the “race to seven” format like in the PSP. Just like years previous, and I’ve been doing this now, going on my fourth year with Chris Raehl and the NCPA, it’s two 16-minute halves, a 32-minute match, with a flag that’s located in the center of the field.
The first two matches took place between Santa Clara Broncos vs Illinois Illini and Army Black Knights vs Connecticut Huskies. The schedule was as follows:
Field 1
8AM: Santa Clara Broncos vs Illinois Illini - Illini won 10-2
9AM: Rutgers Scarlet Knights lost to Ohio Bobcats - 7-5
10AM: Drexel Dragons lost to Illinois State Redbirds 4-9
11AM: Connecticut Huskies lost to California Irvine Anteaters 2-8
12PM: Ohio Bobcats won against West Virginia Moutaineers 7-2
1PM: Tenessee Volunteers defeated Penn State Nittany Lions
2PM: California Irvine Anteaters beat Rutgers Scarlet Knights 7-3
3PM: Univ of Maryland Terrapins beat Ohio Bobcats 8-5
4PM: Illinois Illini lost to Connecticut Huskies 6-3
5PM: Rutgers Scarlet Knights lost to Tennessee Volunteers 12-1
6PM: California Irvine Anteaters beat University of Maryland Terrapins 6-4
Field 2:
8AM: Army Black Knights defeated Connecticut Huskies 6-5
9AM: West Virginia Moutaineers lost to Tennessee Volunteers 1-8
10AM: Michigan Tech Huskies lost to Penn State Nittany Lions 3-10
11AM: Army Black Knights lost to Univ. of Maryland Terrapins 3-11
12PM: Illinois State Redbirds beat Santa Clara Broncos 13-2
1PM: Drexel Dragons lost to Illinois Illini 3-8
2PM: West Virginia Mountaineers beat Michigan Tech Huskies 9-3
3PM: Santa Clara Broncos lost to Army Black Knights 4-5
4PM: Penn State Nittany Lions lost to Illinois State Redbirds
5PM: Michigan Tech Huskies lost to Drexel Dragons 2-11
I believe that California Irvine Anteaters is the surprise Class A team here and is one to look out for. This is their first event as a Class A team, but it’s their 4th year in existence, coming from Class AA in the #1 spot from last season. Coached by the likes of Jon Millman, former pro player for XSV, I believe that this team will continue their success rate as a Class A team. They’re also being supported by 5-man team, Cal State Long Beach Paintball Team, and their sideline coaching is helping, too.
Another team that’s surprising people not because of how well they’re playing, but because of how they didn’t play up to their usual potential. Coming into this event, most teams felt that they would be in the Top 4, for sure, especially since they’re the #1 seat in the Northeast Conference. Although UCONN didn’t play up to par, I still feel that they’re still in the running for the National Championship, and will perform as a stronger, more prepared team in the second day of the three-day College Championships event. Connecticut lost to Army, Anteaters, but beat Illinois Illini by 3 points, 6-3.
Univ. of Maryland is #3 in the Northeast Conference coming into this weekend and in the last match that ran after the sun set at Central Florida Paintball, they put up a good fight against the California Irvine Anteaters and with about 2 minutes and 30 seconds to go in the match, they were tied 4-4. Then, Irvine pulled away, defeating them in the end, 6-4. However, Maryland beat both the Ohio Bobcats and Army Black Knights, so the Terrapins still have a good chance to make it into the Top 4.
Illinois State Redbirds won all three of their matches today beating Drexel by 5, 4-9, Santa Clara Broncos by a huge 11-point spread, 13-2, and then the Nittany Lions of Penn State by a score of 7-4. Solid wins by the Redbirds makes them a contending team at the National title.
Tennessee Volunteers have the most support from their family and friends, it seems, including a new 11-month old nephew related to #18, Joey Bagot! So far, things are looking food for the Volunteers after beating the Nittany Lions, 8-4, WV Mountaineers, 8-1, and Rutgers, 12-1.
A strong program is that of the Illinois Illini who beat Santa Clara Broncos by 8 points, 10-2. Then went to play against Drexel and beat them by 5, 8-3. When they matched up against UConn, the Huskies had to beat this team after losing their first two. Illinois Illini lost by 3, 6-3, to the Huskies, but they’re still in the championship race.
The Ohio Bobcats are without a coach, but hopefully by Saturday, they’ll have a coach in place. Right now, it’s looking like pro player, Mike Venezia, formerly with Strange, and a local resident to central Florida, may be coming in to help in the coach’s box. Even without a coach on the first day of prelims, however, they defeated Rutgers, 5-7, went to play WV Mountaineers and beat them by 5, 7-2, but when they went up against Maryland, they missed the win by 3 points, losing 8-5. Again, this team is another one to look out for and will hopefully be one of the Top 4.
After hearing enough people talk about how Army Black Knights is playing alot better than they expected, especially after beating UConn in overtime by a 6-5 end score, Army went on to lose to the Terrapins by 9 points, 11-3. However, they didn’t lose hope when they went to face off against first time Class A experience, west coast of California team, Santa Clara Broncos. Army defeated Santa Clara by one point, a close match, 4-5. Who knows, these fellas hailing from West Point in New York could be the surprise of the season if they play with the same fervor when they went up against the likes of the almighty UConn.
Penn State Nittany Lions had a tough first day here at the JT Sports College Nationals, having only won one against Michigan Tech Huskies, 3-10. The Lions lost to the Redbirds, 4-7, and the Volunteers, 8-4.
Michigan Tech Huskies, Rutgers Scarlet Knights, and Santa Clara Broncos, are all out of the running for the championship. West Virginia Mountaineers were only able to win one of their games against the Michigan Tech Huskies, 9-3.
A THOUGHT
Wouldn’t it be great to see high school teams get recruited to college teams? What about seeing pro teams scout at events like the College Paintball National Championships? At the rate that the NCPA is going now, it won’t be too long before these college players will be playing at the level that a pro team would need. The biggest demographic for paintball participation is between the ages of 18-24.
PaintballPhotography.com Gary Baum
I knew Gary before he was “famous”. : ) Gary is one of the best paintball photographers in the world and has provided photography to paintball fanatics everywhere absolutely for free via his website at PaintballPhotography.com. He’s got photographers that submit free images to the site all over the world and his website is the only one of its kind. Gary does this simply because he loves it and it isn’t his full-time job. He is also a very accomplished orthodontist - BaumOrthodontics.com. Thanks, Gary, for your support.
MeaganFosterPhoto.com
Teams, Players, Editors, Manufacturers… Meagan Foster is a friend of mine and a “fantabulous” photographer. Hire her.
I had Becky, Jackie, and Angie on the phones at the same time, all talking during the show!!!
Earlier tonight, I hosted my very own show - Bea’s Buzz - for PlayLikeAGirlSports.com/RADIO and will be doing so every Wednesday at 8PM with the help from Becky Raikles, my co-host, and the rest of Destiny!!! It’s a show specifically for females in paintball and talks about everything paintball as it pertains to us ladies. I plan on having other special guests to talk about women in the sport, too, from the first women to play the sport back in the early 80s up until present day. Check it out - http://www.PlayLikeAGirlSports.com/RADIO!!!
This weekend, we attended the 2nd CFOA XBall event with D3 X-Ball team, RedNRG. On the first day of prelims, RedNRG won all their matches. Then, on Sunday morning, we had one more prelim match to play against Raiden. Raiden defeated RedNRG by two points, a score of 3-5, putting RedNRG into the “Ocho Finals”. Then, when we went into the Quarter-finals, we lost to BR Boyz by three frustrating points and it put us out for the rest of the event. RedNRG finished in the Top 8 this time, their second event of the CFOA X-Ball season, and this showing was a better one than what we managed to help them do at the first CFOA X-Ball event. Mike will be going to Alabama next weekend to practice/coach the team for the first time, giving them one-on-one time to improve and get even farther for the 3rd CFOA X-Ball event upcoming. Check out http://www.RedNRG.com for more info about Steve Scott’s D3 team from Alabama. Also, go to http://www.TheCFOA.com to get all the details about one of the best regional tournament series in the country. Coming up for me, it’s the College Paintball National Championships that will air on Fox Sports Net and will take place at Central Florida Paintball the weekend of April 19th.
We got up early this morning to make the trek over to Disneyland by 830AM and stayed until 430PM; it was a long, but extremely fun time with Becky Raikles and Kim Ma, our newest pickups to Destiny’s roster this season! See more images at the Destiny Myspace page at http://www.MySpace.com/DestinyPB!
Happy Easter, everybody!!! We brought Becky and Kim to eat at IHOP this morning and they’ve never been there! Then, we got back home and we visited with our family (Becky and Kim met our family on Mike’s side) which was followed by the “Xtreme Egg Hunt”! We took a walk to 7-11 for slurpees and came home to enjoy a “friendly” game of Monopoly and got half-way through it to pause for dinner, where we feasted on a delicious ham that George (my 4th dad) made and a juicy chicken that Lance (my 5th dad) made. We danced to the Soula Boy (taught Kim how to do it) and Cupid’s Shuffle after dinner and sat down to watch a movie (Enchanted). We’re getting ready for bed now, it’s been a long, but awesome day, and I hope you had as much fun as we did on Easter Sunday.
Extreme Easter Egg Hunt hosted by Mike Paxson w/ Destiny!!!
Xtreme Easter Egg WINNERS!
I’ll be in California this weekend to practice with some of my girls on Destiny. If you don’t already know by now, Destiny’s back to being an all-female paintball team and we’ll be debuting this new roster of female athletes at the first NPPL event at Huntington Beach. It’s Easter weekend, too, so after we go to church, we plan on going on an Easter Egg Hunt at the paintball field (probably to play some walk-ons at SC Village on Sunday, or something). Wednesday night prior to the HB event, we’ll be hosting the PBLive.TV show alongside Don and Ryan the Mighty! Be sure to tune in! Right now, though, at PBLive.TV, if you missed the Phoenix event Finals, you can view it at Paintball Live! Check it out!
3-18-08, 1:00AM EST: I’m staying the night in Charlotte, NC. US Airways oversold the flight so I volunteered to give up my seat if they needed it, and they did. I would’ve gotten home late tonight anyway (around 1AM) so I figured it wouldn’t make a difference if I just got home tomorrow by 2PM. Thankfully, my mom is here in the USA to help with my Dad but when May comes, she’ll be traveling overseas again for probably a long 9-months. I’ll have to really manage my time and find resources to tap into for Dad’s sake during the times I have to travel to events and clinics; it always seems to work out, though. It’s late, I have to be up early so I can reap the benefit of the $30 food vouchers US Airways gave me to spend.
3-17-08 (St. Patrick’s Day) 1:00PM PST: On my way back to Florida and then Friday, I travel to Ontario, California, for practice before the NPPL Huntington Beach event. This morning, I woke up early to drop off Rocky (Cagnoni) off at the airport and was going to stay at the airport for several hours, but decided to go to the Phoenix Zoo instead! I have to go! They’re boarding the flight to NC right now, but will type more later tonight! Thanks to PbLive.TV Don Saavedra and his beautiful wife, Katharine! Thanks to Keely Watson and Lane Wright of the PSP. Thanks to all the people that listened to the broadcast and to those who attended the event.
Enough to let you know what the top NXL pro teams are doing, I have posted the scores and given some detail about the games taking place here on the NXL field at the PSP Phoenix Open. So, check it out at my blog and also at PBLive. We’ll also be broadcasting live via webcast at PBLive.TV bringing you play-by-play with Matty Marshall!
Click on READ MORE to get the links to PBLive and to my BLOG. In doing so, you’ll also see today’s schedule and the scores thus far here on the NXL field.
{body}Bracket 1
X-Factor
Oakland Infamous
Dogs
Bracket 2
Boston
LA Ironmen
Impact
X-Factor beat the Dogs 7-3
Boston beat Impact 7-5
Oakland Infamous beat Dogs 7-3
Impact beat Ironmen 7-4
Infamous and Oakland is up at 1PM
Boston and Ironmen are up at 2PM
Best team out of each bracket moves on to the Finals to determine who the PSP Phoenix Open Champion and who is $25,000 richer.
$10,000 goes to the 2nd place finisher and nothing goes to 3rd and 4th place.
So far, we know the Dogs are out of the Finals with two losses, having lost to XFactor and Infamous. Infamous and XFactor has to play against each other and basically, the winner of that match will be the one to move onto the Finals match.
If LA beats Boston in the 2PM match, that means that Boston, LA, and Impact will all have 1 win and 1 loss each. If that’s the case, the one to move onto the finals will be determined by the point spread from the quarterfinals.
What a great story for Infamous! They have defeated X-Factor by 1 point in a very close, back and forth, match! The final score was 7-6 and Infamous without the help of Jon Richardson, Eric Prum, and even their coach, Greg Pozzi. They were basically only playing with 8 players and we saw Travis Lemanski, LB Fow, and Glenn Takemoto play almost every single point. So, whatever happens, Infamous will be one of the Top 2, and for their sake, they’re hoping to be the Champs here at the Phoenix Open.
Ironmen vs Boston
What started out as a close match at the beginning of the first half, Ironmen’s Greg Siewers (newcomer from XSV to Ironmen’s roster) got a major penalty assessed against them. Boston started to try to pull away from the Ironmen at that point, making the spread a 2-point differential, the Ironmen put two points up on the board even having to start with 4 players against Boston’s 5. Just when that major penalty time started to dwindle down and the Ironmen was adjusting to having that 1-less player disadvantage off the start, Scott Kemp gets a major penalty assesed against him for playing on, putting two major penalty times up on the clock for the Ironmen to serve. The score was 5-3 at the time, and the Ironmen had a tough time with their 3-players against all of Boston’s players 5. When one of the major penalty times (which started out at 35 seconds) went off the clock, Greg Siewers came running out of the penalty box and surprised the last Boston Red Legion player on the field. The Ironmen had managed to shoot one Boston player off the break and quickly took out a second, chaos took place on the field, and just when it looked like Boston had shot out the three Ironmen, Greg Siewers came running out, making the score at that point 6-4. In the end, however, the Ironmen was just too far away from stopping the Legion from reaching that 7th point mark, thus putting the Ironmen out.
Infamous is matching up against Boston in the finals at 4PM.
AMAZING!!! INFAMOUS WINS! $25,0000 and the Phoenix Open Championship!
Travis Lemanski, LB Fow, Rusty Glaze, Glenn Takemoto, Shane Howe, Gno Benedicto, and Arnold Francisco pulls it off without the help of Jon Richardson and Eric Prum. Also, Greg Pozzi, their coach, had to leave because of a death in the family, so Chris Lasoya helped out in the coach’s box. JR has been at the hotel the entire time of the PHX event and Eric Prum was limping around. Unreal, fantastic story, a team that just said, “What do we have to lose!” and played their hearts out.
Congratulations, Infamous! Final score, 7-6!
So, the Top 12 here at the Phoenix Open is as follows:
CHAMPS - Infamous
2nd - Boston Red Legion
3rd - X-Factor
4th - Impact
5th - LA Ironmen
6th - Dogs
7th - Dynasty
8th - Philly
9th - Tampa
10th - Chicago
11th - Aftermath
12th - Avalanche