The Man Squad

The second official Mansquad paintball match is in the books, and a good time was had by all (er, well, most!). The event was held at Wayne’s World of Paintball in Ocala, Florida. Despite low attendance, we had two new members join us for the event, so welcome aboard to Jamon from Tampa and Aaron from Jacksonville!

We have decided to host Mansquad paintball as a quarterly event.

• Winter Paintball – February
• Spring Paintball – May
• Summer Paintball – August
• Fall Paintball – November

Naturally, the summer paintball will be HOT. We are going to do our best to find locations that are indoors, or attempt to schedule the event during cooler days.

Unfortunately, none of us had the foresight to take pictures of the event, so, I’ll just go ahead and document the highlights and lowlights, as usual.

Highlights

• The park was massive, and had some great scenario fields to play on
• The quality of the rental gear was much better than the previous spot
• The temperature, while still a bit warm, was significantly more comfortable than last time in Gainesville
• Dinner that night at Ipanema Brazilian Steakhouse was the stuff of legends
• We have a new member award (see below)

Lowlights

• We had 60% of our “confirmed” members cancel inside of 72 hours. Very disappointing, guys. While we realize there are always extenuating circumstances, if you feel like there is a chance that you will not be able to make the event, please mark “maybe” on the reservation. We ended up losing money due to all of the cancellations, since we had reserved the park and lunch for 12 people (we originally had 20 confirmed), and only 9 showed.
• Evidently we had the park reserved on an “Airsoft Weekend”. What this loosely translates to is hundreds of teens and their parents dressed to the nines in military garb playing Airsoft on almost every field. This made it difficult for us to get field time
• Our referee was mediocre, and we didn’t feel he was assertive enough to get us fields to play on
• We lost two players after the third game due to injury

As mentioned above, we have a new member award. Unfortunately, one of our members (Sean) was wounded in the midsts of the third game. While sliding into cover, he dislocated his left shoulder and had to go to the nearby emergency room to reset it. He was accompanied by another member (Leonard). Sean and Leonard ended up staying in the ER for most of the day, only meeting up with us for dinner later. With that in mind, we have created the “Purple Thumb” award, for a member who was injured during the course of a Mansquad event. Sean took it like a man and still ended up having an enjoyable time and a great dinner later, so, for that, we salute him, and gladly award him the first Mansquad Purple Thumb.


Next month’s bivouac will be held in the Jacksonville region. We are currently looking at Talbot Island, or, possibly, somewhere in St. Augustine. As always, we will keep everyone posted via Facebook.