[Missing] Super 7's Round 3 2014

[Missing] Super 7's Round 2 2014

PALS Thailand 2014

I'm flying home from the first round of the PALS in Bangkok, Thailand. We finished third. This is has been our best showing in Thailand, with it typically bring our Achilles heel. Despite this, it feels like a very disappointing 3rd place. In previous years, I had felt grateful to make it just to the top 4. I don't think I'd felt like we were playing good enough to win before. But this time we were and it just slipped away in one hot overtime point in the semi finals.

Our prelims went pretty standard, with us winning 4 games and losing 2 to Xtioneers and Raskal. The same Raskal that was on the precipice of winning WCA showed up to play, and the 3 games we had against them throughout the tournament were definitely our most grueling.

Quarter finals consisted of two games, with us facing off against Demonic and Raskal. We were able to smarten up our game plan from a definitive loss to Raskal in the prelims and come away with 2 quarter final wins, leaving us to face off against Asiawan in the semifinal.

We got penalties early in the match and quickly went down 0-2. Back at full strength, we were able to make a comeback and tie the game up at 2-2 and take the game into and overtime point. In this critical point, Rambo took a ball that bounced of another bunker early on, quickly followed by Farran and and Devon getting shot out of their bunkers. This left Trav and I in a 2 vs. 5 against an Aisawan that smelt blood. We were able to slow them down for a few minutes but were eventually picked off, advancing Aisawan to the finals which they won. This left us to verse Raskal again in the playoffs for 3rd and 4th.

Again, it was a slow and technical match with communication and hiding being the key at the beginning of the points against their strong back gunners. We went up 2 points, and then they came back 2 points to tie the match with just under two minutes on the clock. We went into the next next point knowing it would be the decisive point. Rambo was able to dink their dorito player on the hopper and draw a penalty, blowing out their dorito side, so Farran and I advanced down that side and we won the point with 5 seconds left on the clock, awarding us the 3rd place.

The infrastructure at the field was excellent and the event organisers were very helpful and accommodating having us over for our 5th Thailand event.

I'm glad we had Dye Ultralight gear as on Friday we played in 45 degrees and high humidity. Our DM14s were on point as usual and anything we needed, Dye was there to support us.

We'd also really like to thank Michelle who coached us all weekend and did a great job, as well as Milad, Preecher, Dennis, Amber and anyone else who helped us out in the pits!

[Missing] Super 7's Round 1 2014

[Missing]

WCA 2013

I felt a lot of promise for us leading up to WCA 2013. We managed to recover from our misstep at the start of the year, closing out the PPL series with 3 consecutive wins, a 7man win and a big international win mid-year at the second leg of the PALs (and $6k prize money if I need to remind you, omg).

In retrospect now though, there were some chinks in the armour. I'd developed a consciousness of who was better than others on the team. Whether my opinions/inferences were valid doesn't matter because this kind of thinking is totally destructive in paintball. I lost sight of building the team and saw it more as a finished product entitled to do some winning. Some of our players improved more than others this year. I think I lost a bit of humility this time and for the first time I felt frustrated that I had to perceive some players as less capable on the team. I could have been more coaxing and nurturing. But rather I enjoyed playing strong at training. In previous years I've felt that if I'm consistently playing well at training, something is wrong. Usually the team is so good that it's hard to be good week in week out.

But these are just my musings and perhaps not even relevant. Maybe we could have won WCA even with my new-found dick-attitude.

Actually, we went through WCA pretty standard. Finished the prelims 4-2, a normal kind of position for us to go forward on. On Saturday, we played a game against Beeswaxers and lost, only to come back 15 minutes later in our first top 8 game and win 4-0 against them. I felt good about that, but it wasn't a team effort. We played the same 5 guys the whole way through. I'd softened to the "starting five" approach, which I now think was perhaps a mistake.

Following this, we had to play Infernal and then Datis. Infernal beat us 2-4. Datis beat us 1-4. I wish I could say we lost outright, but WE WERE PLAGUED BY PENALTIES. The majority of the time, I feel the reffing is great at PALs events. But there were some outright weird calls going on. Like, I got a bounce off my head, pointed to my head to the ref right next to me, and he just instantly pulls a penalty? I wasn't even hit in the first place, and second, I didn't even shoot/move/do anything after I got the bounce on me other than ask for paint check. Of the 11 points we played against Datis and Infernal, only in 3 points we didn't get a penalty. Something was really wrong with the reffing because I seriously hope we are not stupid enough to legitimately get that many penalties.

Regardless, this sent us onto the quarter finals to play Datis. We had about 0 confidence at this point. It felt like we couldn't even blink without getting a penalty. Stiffla even sat himself and didn't even play a point because he felt like he couldn't get into the game without getting a penalty.

And that was it. We went down 1-4 to Datis and missed out on a top 4 finish at WCA for the first time.

I feel disappointed. And I did feel bitter. But I think some good can come from it like it did at Thailand at the beginning of the year. If satisfaction is the death of desire, then this is about the farthest point from being satisfied that we can be. I can also say now that the evidence is insurmountable that STK doesn't win on individual players being good. We win when we are a team.

If I want more from players I'm just going to tell them rather than scoring them against each other in my head. I'm going to be totally transparent in my thinking and go back to the "family" mindset. That's my off-season goal anyway. Having no hierarchy has got us this far and slipping from that has given us nothing.

PALS Round 2 2013 - Malaysia Open

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.

PALS Thailand 2013

Our almost endless run of making top 4 finally came to an end this weekend in Bangkok. Finishing 2nd at World Cup and then not placing at all here is a hard pill to swallow. But it some ways it may be for the best. I mean, we had got pretty high up on that high horse. Perhaps this can be the catalyst for us to be critical of ourselves. We often feel that we don't put in the same effort at local Perth tournaments because we don't feel the same focus that being away brings us. I hope this is a slap in the face to all of the players on this team that we can always keep improving. And that any success we have is fickle and it can slip away and leave us empty in the middle of the pack so easily.

Our tournament started great. We beat Datis in a nail-biter 3-2, with that "little bit extra" showing itself in the final minutes with Trav flying down the snake. We sailed on for a bit longer until we met Nemesis. We couldn't survive the breakout against them and got 4-0'd. I feel as though this was the loss that cracked us -- after this we were playing anxiously.

When the team plays good, things just work. We don't talk about playing good, or think about playing good, we just play good. We're usually resilient to losses and can make adjustments to game plans or timing, but this time, our adjustments became more and more frequent and our anxiety levels got higher and higher. And some players were flipping out. And we're not a flip out team, so that made things worse.

Our top 12 draw was rough with Datis, Infernal and Tsunami. We had to win at least 2 of those games to proceed. Going in with the wrong mindset and doubt in our game plans translated into us getting crushed by Datis and Infernal. It worked out though that if we lost the Infernal game by only 1 point, we would have a high enough score to move onto the next round. So the first point was an 8 minute point, leaving 2 minutes game time. I started saying "lets just lose by one point." I wanted us to cross up and burn the clock. I don't think it's being a pussy. We gift ourselves a second chance to collect ourselves and play again and realistically, we are not got going to beat Infernal when we're not playing to our potential. But we opted for the gungho route and tried to get it back and the tournament slipped away from us.

Our new DM13's were of course amazing though, and our new Ultralite gear should have arrived in Perth.