It was two years ago in the Phillippines that we last got to have this feeling -- first place! We won the Malayisa Open, and its massive prize pool. Life is good.
I think we'd been building up to this tournament since World Cup Asia where we took second place. That second place really did a number on us. It was a frustrating couple of months following it. We wanted nothing more than to just jump right back into that finals game and have another shot at it.
But like all things in life, we had to wait, there were more lessons to be learned, and evidently, Thailand was a disaster for us. So were the first few local tournaments of the year too actually.
After Thailand, I think everyone looked at themselves. I changed my game is for sure. I felt I had a rejuvenated energy to put into fixing up weaker areas of my game. We also returned to the mentality that we'd built the entire team on... that we were going to sweat more and fight harder than our opponents. We also came to the realization that the whole tournament is a process; you have to see it through from beginning to end -- getting to the finals is the epitome of all the work you put in at the event. You can't just hit your peak immediately and be playing perfect. That kind of mindset is a setup for failure.
Our prelim bracket was:
Ronin (4-2)
Beeswaxers (4-2)
Datis (0-4)
Nemesis (2-2)
Demonz (4-2)
Datis beat us good -- they would shoot 2 or more off the break and clean the rest of us up in seconds. The game probably only went for 3 minutes.
Nemesis was sitting at top of the preliminary scoreboard, so we were took some confidence in drawing to them.
We entered the quarter finals matched up to Datis. Whenever we 4-0 a good team in the prelims, I am always anxious when we play them again because I know they're (probably) going to have figured out how they got beat so bad and be ready to give it back to us. I wanted us to be that team that would come out and kick them back in the guts.
Our first point against them came down to a 2 vs 2, but Farran's gun was down. Stiffla was able to push down the doritos and eliminate one of the Datis players, but then got taken out. With no other option, Farran began working his way down the doritos to go for the buzzer. He got far enough away from Datis' gun that the match ended with Farran and the Datis player both sprinting for the buzzer. Farran got there first and the point went to us. We secured another two points in quick succession after this. But we had some trouble securing the 4th point to win the match. We were actually about to get it, I think there was 4 of us alive onto 2, but we all threw our bodies away and it left Datis to sprint the buzzer in with 4 seconds left to tie up the score and go into overtime. But upon hitting the buzzer, I'm not sure if they were assessed a penalty or violated a safety rule, but the point was reversed and we got sent onto the semifinals.
Our semi-finals match was against Nemesis. They have been a bit of a Nemesis to us recently, being the only team other than Infernal to beat us at World Cup Asia, and probably giving us our most definitive loss in Thailand. I can't describe the feeling, but I just knew inside that we were ready to fight out whatever came our way.
They were about to take the first point, but got a penalty bunkering our last player, meaning they had to start the next point with 4 players. We capitalized on this and kept the momentum in our favour. Trav was unstoppable down the snake. We had a long point when the score was 2-0, but after that I felt we were in control and we took the match 4-0.
And so we moved onto the finals against Xtioneers. The Xtioneers have a revamped roster and are playing really strong. Having just fought through Datis and Nemesis, I felt like we were ready to go. Our match against them was back and forth. My favourite part of the match was when they were up on us 3-2 with 2 minutes of game time left. I remember saying to the guys before the breakout "don't let this slip away from us." I got into snake 1 and was trapped for about a minute.Time was ticking away to a disappointing finish for us, but I managed to snap out their tower which was holding me up, allowing me to get into snake 3 and make some quick kills and sprint the buzzer in.
This left 22 seconds of game time remaining before we'd forced to play an overtime point. The heat was pretty excruciating by this point so we were all pretty keen to end the match in regulation...
I got to my bunker and saw the corner shooting at me. I didn't feel like I really had time to tuck in and gun battle so I just committed to it and traded with him. I begun to walk off and all I remember seeing is Devon run through and mow the remaining 4 guys with Farran closely pursuing down the snake.
And that was it. We won!
We had the whole family here at this event -- Brad, Christine, Michelle and even Jas made an appearance. We had a lot of support from other Australian teams in the pits and sidelines -- thanks! Dye Paintball, namely our mate Stutzy the C who has been ever so accommodating in getting all of our gear to us and helping us out. And thanks to WASP Paintball, our home field.
