Only Americans understand the true fervour and passion of US college sport. For the English sports fan, the enemy might be the Germans, the Argentinians, the other home nations, and, of course, the Australians. Definitely, the Australians. Meanwhile, the Scots traditionally support anyone who is playing England. But US sports teams rarely compete in national competitions. Baseball’s World Series justifies its name by extending the boundaries of the US to Canada. Golf’s Ryder Cup is one exception, but the bi-annual coming together of US golfers to play their European counterparts is something US tour professionals occasionally seem as comfortable with as putting downhill at Augusta.
No, for US sports nuts it is college sport that gets the adrenalin gushing and passions rising. So it’s no surprise that the US National Collegiate Paintball Association competition is a blood-boiling hit. It allows competing state university students to stop shouting at each other and start shooting. Just the way they like it.
The competition itself is as old as paintball in the US. Not surprisingly, the first college paintball club was formed at the United States Military Academy in 1986. In 1994, the first intercollegiate tournament was held at Sherwood Forest in La Porte, Indiana. Former Illinois Senator Barack Obama was no doubt pleased that the University of Illinois was crowned the first national winner in 2000.
In fact, it is was a former University of Illinois student Chris Raehl who co-founded the National Collegiate Paintball Association (NCPA) which now runs the competition. Chris, who began playing paintball with a friend’s church group, set up the NCPA in 2000.
Over the last few years, a growing band of the US’s top universities such as Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania have entered the battle to be the top university. Iowa State University Paintball Club is even funded by the University to construct a permanent on-campus paintball field.
The league has a long and short format, which is described as class A and class AA. The national championship for class A is decided in a shoot-off between 12 teams in April, while the class AA has over 100 teams competing on a league basis. Topping the table in the short format rakings for 2008/9 are the University of Texas Mean Green – well you’d expect Texans to be sharp shooters.
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