Latrobe, are you aware that one of the best Pro teams in history is based in Latrobe, as well as their paintball company "Smart Parts"? When I was a kid I played pro in the NPPL (we were the only Canadian team to place consistently and won 2nd in the 5 man worlds and 3rd in the 10 man Worlds). Anyhow, the All Americans were one of the best pro teams, from Latrobe Penns, and one of my teamates Roddy Mcdonald went on to manage their team for a long while, and is still involved with Smart Parts I think. Hard to believe it was 17 years ago.....my team (Personal Vendetta, Canada),which was sponsored by W'Orr Game, Bob Long, Smart parts, RP Scherer, and JT Usa, got 2nd at the World Amateur Open in 1994, it still remains one of the biggest events ever held in pro/am paintball, with over 500 5 man teams competing....paintball was HUGE during its growth spurt. I can remember there being over 100 5 man teams at events in Alberta back in the early 90's.
That picture of the Bushmaster Pump brings back a lot of memories too, the owner of that company started a team called "Navarone" that was king of everything in terms of competitive paintball back in the very early 90's until the semi-autos like the VM68 and early Tippman guns came out. Again, it seems like yesterday, but it's now 20 years since I started playing too, and13 since I stopped working and playing in the industry for a living. Crazy.
Now, I realize this might sound quite stupid, but...not so much the skills of paintball, but more the "reaction" time you get from incoming fire and being able to jerk your body from the waist up while on your knees/behind cover/fighting at a corner has served me quite well in my career post paintball. I've worked for a Private Military Company for the last 7 years until getting sidelined from getting System Lupus, and again, as silly as it sounds, the reflexes developed from the thousands of days I spent playing paintball helped my skills develop quickly while working first as a pistol instructor for SigArms Academy, then for Globe Risk and Tundra security as well (The documentary "Shadow Company" was based largely on me and my company during one of our training cycles and subsequent deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan in the business). Again, it's been my experience that paintball shooting and real shooting have dramatic differences, but the "reaction time/quick reflex" developed by playing PB can translate to a lot of other things, in particular combat shooting/staying alive-using cover.
I know there is another active AH player here on the HTC forums who playing in the NPPL way back when I just can't find it in the search engine right now. Pretty sure he was from one of the legendary Florida teams, hah.
edit: Even though I played competitively I still LOVED big games, and back when I worked in the PB biz, we were the national distributors for RP Scherer Paintballs, and we convinced them to make a short run of neon glow in the dark balls back in the early 90's. We took these to a night game at Sat Cong Village in California where 600 plus players came out for a night game. It was the most insane thing I think I've ever seen still to this day, as the semi autos like the AutoMag and Auto Cocker were newly out, and the thousands of balls flying at night glowing like lasers made the whole area look like Star Wars writ large. The military and police got dozens of calls that night from people nearby wondering WTF was happening. Good times.
