Hawkes Bay 3-Man 2002
Dazz Marshall - Feb 2002

2nd and 3rd of February, a date where for most years I had heard the rumor’s of an excellent tournament down in Hastings. A lot of players had told me that this Triples was the best tournament around that time of the year. So, this year of course I made up my mind that I had to head down there and check this tournament out for myself. And after two days of constant tournament play, being fragged up, tagging people here and there and running around like a loony, what do I have to say about the tournament you may ask? Everything the Players told me was true…

The Venue was located in Stoney Creek ranch in Hastings, where within your field fee you were supplied with two days of awesome tournament Paintball, accommodation and excellent food. It was an unbeatable deal, The games were fast and interesting, the rooms we got to stay in, had power, bunk beds and their own toilet facilities, and the food was there three times a day for the players and the coffee was ready always. So big thanks to Les Hall for organizing the entire event getting an entire 17 teams to the event. And a big thanks should go out to the awesome staff that catered it for us and had to put up with us, hungry, smelly and often noisy paintball players.

The fields were placed upon a large rugby field they placed three fast action fields; the ‘Smash’ air ball field from Auckland, the new air ball field with compliments to Tony Witheridge for supplying it, and a plywood speedball field thanks to Tag ‘n’ Release. Despite the fact that two of the fields were both air ball fields, they did in fact differ considerably. The Auckland air ball field was made up from a large assortment of standard and kiwi made sup’air ball covers, while Tony’s air ball filed consisted of less, but larger barricades. The speedball field stretched about the same length as the other two fields, being made up of lower covers with a large wall in the middle. And just for the record all fields were played 3-man center flag. The speedball field had a slightly different starting point than the other fields however, with the players having to face away from their opposition and touch their barrels on a drum at the center point of their end of the field.

I was glad to see over the two days, no extremely large upsets from any of the teams, despite a few disagreements with a few of the referees, which can be expected at any great sporting event. The referees by the way did an excellent job and deserved every bit of the thanks that everyone gave them at the prize giving. The paint was limited to only a hundred rounds per player, per game. At first I was a little skeptical about stepping on the field with only half a hopper, but it was surprising how quickly you can adapt. Not only did the paint limit make the tournament a lot cheaper, but it made the games go through faster and made them a lot more exciting to watch from the side line, as the amount of bunkers had seemed to double from the usual. A lot of players told me over the tournament that they really didn’t notice a big difference between a hundred round games and standard hopper ball (200).

Comic relief, I’m not the only one speaking here I’m sure, I think had the most original uniform there, good stuff guys. And Kapiti a younger team, who I personally think will be giving our teams tough competition in tournaments to come. It was funny to see some of the newer teams ripping up the more experienced teams as well. In saying this almost every game over the tournament was spectacular, each having their own twist, with some players left on their own eliminating the other three players on the field, teams with only two players winning games against three and one team even maxed all of their games on Tony’s field in under thirty seconds! There wasn’t any particular games or teams I wanted to project above the others, as all of the teams made all of the games terrific to watch. This added to make the final points a real surprise, as anything could have been expected.

After lunch on the Sunday, there were the finals, with only two teams going through being GPS and RUSH. GPS took away the win, but RUSH put up an awesome fight and some teams would even agree that RUSH proved to be the most aggressive team at the tournament that weekend. The prize giving was great, with some really excellent prizes given out to the teams who not only played well but gave the greatest effort as well. Even after the prize giving everyone who wanted to, got to have their turn on speaking their mind about the sports progression over all. The first and second place teams walked away with medals, while shirts, protective gear and boxes of paint were given to the other prizewinners. There was even a raffle draw for a semi automatic hand held marker with a ten round magazine (A more modern PT Enforcer I think). So with out saying anymore I’ll be headed back to the next one Les, and I hope to see even more teams there in the next event. The final scores and prizes are as follows:

Preliminary Results

GPS	1530
RUSH	1230
Flict	1220
DNA	1070
Phoenix (Red)	1010
Smash	1000
Bronco’s	920
Shock (W)	902
Fusion	900
Phoenix (Grey)	848
Menace	770
Your mama	696
Shock (P)	670
Brewha	590
Shock Tactics	480
Kapiti (jnr)	394
Comic Relief	-34

Final Results

GPS	100
RUSH	10

Prizes

Most Stand-Out Team:	Comic Relief
Player whos marker needed the most         protection from its operator:	David Mitchell (Kapiti)
Team who needed new tops the most:	Flict
Grubbiest Player:	Paul (Comic Relief)
Most Underworked Person:	Carl (Chrono Ref)
Referees Prize:	Half a box of Powerade each.