"Rocky signed my tank cover," one kid bragged over his souvenir prize. "Oh yeah? He shot me!" another gloated, showing his purple badge of courage from a game against the legend. So began the stories, as Spiro calls them "war lies," from Ronn Stern Camp 04.
By now hundreds of campers have cycled through the once experimental, now widely imitated, camps. They began in 2003 with a series of events based around SplatBrothers PaintBall near Hopewell Virginia. Every camp sees a few familiar faces, as alumni of the extraordinary curriculum return to soak up more tips from established masters of the form.
APG attended the July 2004 camp at Skirmish USA in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Players from across the country flew, drove, and hitched rides to converge on a hotel several minutes from the world class facility. After a long check-in procedure and short orientation dinner Sunday night, the 25th, they fell into the routine of late nights with new friends and early mornings piling onto a school bus for the ride out.
Day One Rocky Cagnoni leads by example, on the field, in the staging area...at parties...and on the grass early in the morning. He refuses to play without properly stretching out and warming up, and Monday morning the campers got their first lesson: wake up right with calisthenics. Rocky explained the tie between physically warming up and getting psyched up, instructing in the nuances of preparation while he demonstrated solid techniques to limber up.
Monday, the exercises seemed an exercise in tedium...Tuesday, with burning muscles from the day before, calf and hamstring stretches felt positively torturous...but students noticed a decided performance boost.
Each day started with "Rocky-robics," followed by frenzied field preparation. The second lesson on Monday was how to inflate bunkers, stake them down so the stakes are safe for players, and how to set up fields.
Players were broken into groups of 10 to 15, one instructor per group, identified by colored tape wrapped around their biceps. Suited up, psyched up, and good to go, they stepped onto the fields under the watchful eyes of the legendary MC announcer and player Bea Youngs, rock-star famous Rocky Cagnoni, snap shooting wizard Jon Call, or the master of the run-n-'gun, Mike Paxson. Ronn Stern, paintball's foremost artist, and Don Hagar, of SplatBrothers PaintBall, floated from group to group supervising the action and working behind the scenes to fill tanks and keep paint supplies up to demand.
Lunch drew mixed emotions, but afternoon action kicked players back into the spirit of the
game. Virtually all players packed electronic markers bought with parents' money, yard mowing cash, secret stashes with nebulous origins, or lunch money extorted from little brothers. There was a contingent of hardcore Tippmann fans, and every sort of loader from Halo B hoppers to non-agitated basic VL shells. One vocal front player lamented not packing his Phantom stock class pump marker.
Jon Call ran players through snapshooting drills on Skirmish's HyperBall field, though he and students carped about not being able to practice on the inflatable field set up nearby. Among other tips, he taught students how to pick a distant landmark that corresponds with where your primary target is on the field, and lining up as if to shoot that landmark through your bunker. Snap out after lining up, and you are already most of the way on target...blaze away.
On an adjacent field, Rocky ran students through "The Pain Game," an exercise that serves two purposes: get people over their fear of being hit, by hitting them until they learn to like it, and getting them full of adrenaline enough to play hardcore one on one and two on two drills immediately afterwards. Two players lined up facing each other, 20 yards apart, with open ground between them. One player took careful aim and shot his opponent, then the opponent took careful aim and returned fire. Ducking, weaving, and flinching were strictly prohibited: take it, that's the only way to get used to it and not mind the sting anymore.
Students broke the mental connection between seeing an attacking player, hearing the pop of his marker, and the action of flinching in fear. In place of the fear response, they learned how to hold form and not throw off their aim, so that fear and instinctive response wouldn't throw them off their aggressive game.
Monday night was all about fun, Tippmann Castle style! One of Skirmish's best-known features is the enormous, three story, fully playable Tippmann Castle set on a forest field. With more angles than a modern art sculpture, this complex is awesome to play and hard to beat...especially when your opponents are top pro players, the rest of the camp staff, and have entire cases and spare 68/4500 tanks just waiting.
Elimination rules went out the window like the hailstorm of paint from inside. Anarchy rocked the entrances. For over an hour students fought to gain a foothold in the complex, some crawlingthrough windows, others long-balling from the tree line, all intent on lighting up anything that moved inside.
Tuesday morning paint sales were good.
Tuesday Rocky-robics were confused with an ancient Pocono Indian rain dance: shortly after the stretches, the heavens poured with a fury to make Noah cower in awe. So much for day two. Students and instructors retired to the hotel, where tech classes, video games, and story time whiled away the hours.
Tom Kaye's tech seminar was missed this year, but as pointed out by several key people, the speeches (popular during the 2003 camps) went largely over the heads of many young and less tech-savvy players. Additional emphasis was put, instead, on marker-specific courses where students learned the ins-and-outs of the particular marker they used.
Wednesday Another day, another hotel continental breakfast decimated like a wheat field in a locust plague, and another set of Rocky-robics in the damp morning grass. The campers broke into groups again, in defiance of overcast skies. Ronn, Don, and most campers agreed: if it rained, they would just learn how to deal with the weather, too--it was a camp for learning, after all.
Mike Paxson lead campers through a run-n-'gun funhouse on the inflatable field: they started with their markers on the start station, and on his command, brought them to bear against two distant plywood targets set in lanes. After laning to suppress opponents' moves, they ran downfield to find angles on barrels that hid behind bunkers. Everything was timed, with the fastest players laning, running, and eliminating five barrels in around 19 seconds.
Bea Youngs took an afternoon break from running drills and crossing-up exercises to catch a few one-on-one games against the more arrogant campers...destroying them time and again. To wind down the afternoon, she jumped into a few 5-man and 7-man practice games with teams that formed early for the traditional Thursday tournament.
Prove It! All week students told the instructors how much they learned. Thursday, they had to prove it. Students broke into two categories, Rookie and Novice, based on their performance during the camp. Within these classifications they formed seven man teams, and Thursday morning squared off for the first prize in each bracket: a game against the instructors!
Going into the finals for the Novice division, Viagra (this writer's team) faced Kookamonga in the game that decided 1st and 2nd place. Players fell from the start at the hands of aggressive lane
shooters. Then the show-wire Viagra tape players got nicked! Kookamonga mid players fell to Viagra's snap shooters, who in turn got clobbered by Kookamonga's show wire players. Before anyone could catch up to the action, two Viagra snake players remained (one back player and me) to oppose a single Kookamonga player in the show-wire rear standup: Ryan Dickinson from Scottsdale, Arizona.
Moving very aggressively, I swung wide down a tape line, instead of charging through mad open areas to try to bunker him; my teammate kept Dickinson's head down. Hosing Dickinson's standup, sending intimidating streams around the sides to keep his head in, I advanced. Then tragedy--or magic--struck: Dickinson snapped out to shoot three balls left handed, whacking me right in the head...just above the goggles. He made quick work of the last Viagra player, winning game, set, and match.
"Snapshooting out of the left side" helped, Dickinson said, mentioning Jon Call's clinic, and "a lot of lane shooting." The tips learned at the camp made the winning difference.
Congratulations to: Novice 1st, Kookamonga. 2nd, Viagra. 3rd, Treehuggers. Rookie 1st, AK Army. 2nd, Team. 3rd, Flames.
Kookamonga then gave the pros a run for their money that no one expected...no one, except maybe Dickinson. It took two minutes and thirty seconds for seasoned NPPL veterans to wipe out the rowdy Kookamonga team, and much less time against the rookies.
2005 Want to play with the stars in 2005? Ronn Stern is bringing his signature camps ever farther west this year. Check out www.paintballcamps.com for more information on how you can rock like a pro!
Dave "Landshark" Norman writes from the winter wonderland of New Hampshire.
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