| A lot of the articles you see written by the
"pros" deal mainly with tournament style play. I try very hard to incorporate
tips into my article that will benefit players of all types and of all skill
levels. Again, this months feature is geared more toward the tournament players,
so please bare with me.
(Steve Rabackoff is a member of the Sothern California Ironmen, and works
at DYE Products in San Diego, California)
Dealing with a Loss
How to deal with a loss is an important aspect of tournament paintball. What
happens when a team loses a game can seriously affect the way the team performs
the rest of the event and in a worst case scenario, I have seen it break
teams up!
First, and most importantly, it needs to be kept within the team and out
of the public eye. The last thing you want at a tournament is to blow up
in front of a crowd of people. It doesn't look good to your sponsors and
other teams see it as a weakness. Cooler heads must prevail. Whatever problem
your team has, it needs to go back to the staging area and/or in some cases
even back to the hotel and try work things out.
Once you get back to your staging area or the hotel and begin to discuss
what happened, you have to avoid the finger pointing. Very rarely is it one
persons fault when you lose a game. Try to go through all the events that
transpired during the game and eventually you'll figure out what you did
to get your but kicked. More often than not, it is a series of events during
the game that lead to defeat. One trick I found useful when I was captain
of the Heat was to keep the guys at the field or meet back up at the field
and go through the game on the particular field we lost on. A lot of times
what I found was that it wasn't anything that one guy or several guys on
the team did wrong but what the other team did right! These are the types
of things you want and need to know if you plan to improve your game.
You can also take the excuses and shove them straight up your but as well.
I can't stand the guys, especially young amateur teams, that come off the
field crying "those pro guys cheated" or the "ref screwed us over man"....this
is really a bunch of bull! In Houston Heat's very first NPPL event we had
to play Aftershock. We lost the game but we played our asses off. It was
kind cool the way things worked out though. Renick Miller and Vu of Shock
finally pushed our left wire, we pushed the right and middle at the same
time taking out 'Shocks only two defenders. On the way into the flag station
the judge stopped all three players and made them stand there as he checked
them. When he finally decided to call them clean, Vu and Renick cut the corner
and had back shots on all three guys. It would have been real easy to blame
the judges or to bitch about the ½ case of spray on Vu's goggle but
we didn't. We did not by any means like losing, but the bright side of it
was that we played a hell of a game against one of the greatest teams in
the sport of Paintball and almost pulled it off. In my first year with the
Ironmen I have been on both sides of this street. After our first event this
year we were disappointed and blaming one another.
After our second event we took a look at some of the things we were doing
wrong and what some of the other teams were doing right and we made adjustments.
By our third event we were well on our way back to the top and it showed
in how we played at the World Cup. I know it sucks to lose but it's something
that is going to happen. Paintball is a team sport. You are not going to
win all the time and one of the things that really has made the great teams
great is that they learn from their mistakes. So the next time you're at
a tournament and you lose a game or two or miss the semi's or finals don't
go away mad. Stick around and watch the finals.
Talk to the team you lost to and ask them what you did wrong or head out
to that field that gave you trouble and take a look at it again.
Thanks for reading.
|
