I’ve had my share of scrimmages when I first started playing speedball. I got a taste of a type of competitiveness that just was not present in big recballs games. Players in speedball know what they are doing and are adept in the play-style that requires quick reflexes and exceptional field awareness.
When I started playing, I only went to bunkers that were standing. I did not want to dive into the snake or stay kneeling for a good amount of time at the dorito side. My abilities were limited and I wasn’t about to try to learn how to slide. I wasn’t until I was watching videos of snake players that I became interested in learning a forward role.
I started training myself on how to dive and slide properly. Having no baseball or football growing up in the Philippines, I wasn’t familiar with proper sliding. Diving was not really a problem for me since I practice parkour a lot. Eventually, I started working on my sprints and timing my dives into the snake. Eventually, my team would drill me with snake plays and teach me important things about being a snake player.
After I accumulated skills in speedball, I was itching for tournament experience. The nearest and most convenient tournament was the AFPL Chaos Ball. I was not able to make Chaos Ball #1 due to work responsibilities, but I was able to make the second one on May 11, 2013. Man, was it a blast.
Coming into the field in San Diego in the morning of the tournament, I was hyped. Unlike most other sports, I was not nervous or panicky. I was calm and composed. That’s when I knew this sport was for me. I did not think about failing or making an embarrassment of myself, I was thinking about how I would make it harder for the other team to win against us. I was pumped and I wanted to win.
Preparation was just the same as when we would just be scrimmaging. My routine was no different and this made me even more comfortable. The only disappointment to me was I was not going to be going to the snake as much as I would like because we had added a player smaller than me and was perfect for going into the snake. So I ended up being his corner guy for majority of the time. It wasn’t a big deal for me at the start, but it did later on when I started noticing significant things. More on that later.
I did not start well enough on the first game. I decided to run and gun to my corner off the break, but I got laned out. So I was not able to actually play. Nevertheless, our team won, 3-0. My next game was a little better because I was able to stay in all the way. The first thing I noticed about myself was that I was using a lot of paint than I would be if we were just scrimmaging. I ran through 3 pods in one game. I was surprised to have used so much, but my instinct in the game a corner player is to tuck the enemy in so that my snake can move forward.
Another one is that I can maximize the power of my legs because the traction is excellent. My main training regimen is leg strength and max agility. I run at my top speed and train my legs to stop at a dime. I’ve been taking fish oil to help with maintaining my joints in order for me to be able to do this consistently. In every game, I was able to go from 0 to top speed in less than 2 seconds and from top speed to 0 in less than a second. I have trained my body to lean a certain way when I stop so that my momentum would not carry my body forward and be open to enemy fire.
When I do need to slide, though, I can slide much earlier because the turf allows me to go further. It has less friction when there’s no treads to provide traction on your jersey. All in all, I was comfortable moving around turf and was able to utilize my speed and agility training to my advantage.
As the day progressed and we played games of “race to 3”, I started to notice that most of our wins came from the dorito side. Our snake side would be shut down because we could not or would not move forward. Many times did the coach tell our snake player to move up, but he did not. I was trained for the last 2 months to respond to either my corner player or my coach when they say that I can go forward. I have built up the confidence in my teammates in order for me to be able to just look in and not worry about my tape because I know I am covered. My field awareness has improved since I started and I usually know how many people we have left on the field. So I was kind of frustrated that our snake guy was not moving when he was told to.
Even though our snake player was good and was hard to hit, it was his reluctance to move forward and to make critical moves that held our snake side back. That was my main problem. I’ll be honest; I did not drive down to San Diego to not win first. I was hungry for that win.
We made it to the quarter finals at second place. Then I started seeing different flaws in our hybrid team. To explain, our hybrid team is a mixture of the first and second string players. They are used when we definitely need to win. If I had been in the team longer, I would have suggested putting me in the hybrid team instead of one other person. Not that he was not any good, on the contrary, as a paintball player, he’s probably better than me and would win in a one-on-one gun battle. But he was out of shape and was getting winded. I wanted to take his place because I noticed how much he was slowing down compared to the first games of the day. Had I been put in his place, I would have been able to make faster and decisive moves.
I’m not saying I would have been able to make the team win. I just noticed that some of our guys were clearly tired and no amount of skill will remove exhaustion from the table. I did not say anything to the team. I decided to just tell them that the next time our string was playing that I was going for the snake and have our original snake guy be my back up; just to prove something to myself. When the game started, I made it to the snake, was able to crawl up further than anyone on our string ever did the entire day, and I crossed out their dorito side, making it easy for our dorito guy to move in for the kills and close the game. At that point, I was convinced that I should just play snake for the rest of the time. But, I was never able to because we sent out our hybrid team because we feared losing.
Would it have made a difference if I replaced one of them? Maybe. We’ll never know. But the next time we are put in a situation where we need to win, I think I’ll speak up. I was highly upset that we got 3rd place. I wanted first and we could have won first. We were clearly a stronger team and we made very little mistakes in the first games of the day and we could have continued. But I guess that’s what experience will teach you: nothing goes the way you think it will go. Case in point: the team that was undefeated in the prelims got 4th place.
All in all, the experience was great. It taught me a little more about the competitive nature of the sport and I was able to get my first tournament under my belt. I’m happy to have participated and learned from it.
I’m done.
-X-
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