PSP World Cup 2007

It's that time again in which I write up yet another event review for all of you and this time it's PSPs 2007 World Cup. That's right, the biggest, best and last event of the year. Everyone shows up to play and everyone expects to win making it one of the most intense events ever. The best part of World Cup is that yours truly gets to stand on the side and be blasted both physically and verbally. Well, not so much verbally this year but I still have the opportunity of getting drilled in the head and have no means to make any type of reprisal. So what are we waiting, let's get this thing started!

Tuesday – Fly out of Houston and land in somewhat sunny Orlando, Florida around 2PM. Get picked up from the airport an hour later via Dave Baker (thanks again Dave) and head out to Disney's Wide World of Sports to check out the vendors and fields and everyone I haven't seen since Omaha, awesome. Unfortunately, most of that doesn't happen. Oh I still got picked up by Dave and we drove out to the venue but I didn't get to check out the fields or vendors or meet with people I haven't seen since Omaha. Instead I sat in Dave Baker's truck making sure no one stole our bags while he searched for everyone else. Well, he only found one person and we went back to the hotel, dropped stuff off and I got my hotel room. Later that night, everyone shows up, we go to Sun on the Beach, have a few beers and then eventually go to bed and try to get some sleep before the first day of the tournament.

Wednesday – You know how at each tournament there is at least one day that sucks more than the rest? Always the same problems; scoreboard doesn't work, air stations constantly down, weather goes bad, bunkers get torn up, etc. Usually this day isn't till the third day of the event so you've had some time to prepare for it. Well, not World Cup, because when shit goes down at Cup, it goes down on the first day. This day was just straight up bad or for me at least. It wasn't the usual problems either; it was just the overall play by the teams and job by the refs. Everything just felt sloppy; simple as that. I threw more penalties on this day than I did at Chicago and Omaha combined. I'm almost certain that I threw a total of 13 penalties if not more. We started the day off with a bracket of D2 X-ball and the first two matches, no penalties from anyone. The third match I threw the first penalty of the day, a major and from there it erupted. From that point on every team that played on our field received several penalties for various infractions. After a quick lunch, we were back on the field now refereeing Open division. Things didn't progress any more smoothly than they did in the morning and to top it off in our second to last match the air compressor that runs both for the NXL field and my field goes down. We wait around 40 minutes to fix the damn thing so we can finish a match that was almost done with. By the time everything is ready it is already getting dark forcing us to push the last match to tomorrow morning. This is the second time this has happened to me this season, terrific. Also I threw my voice out and would spend the rest of the event with laryngitis.

Thursday – If you wanted to compare Wednesday to Thursday, you would call it Opposite Day. We started the morning with a bracket of Open division matches and all but the last match were blowouts. Everything was going great till we started the afternoon bracket of D2 X-ball. For all the good calls we made that morning and the great job I felt like we were doing quickly evaporated when the D2 teams came on the field. The worst part of the day came during a match between CFK and Florida Outsiders, where I watched a FO player shoot a CFK player from across the field after doing a run-thru. I signaled his elimination and watched what I thought was Damien and Smalls going in to pull him, which wasn't the case at all. Instead, they wiped the CFK player clean for being spun on by the FO player in the snake never noticing that a couple of hits came from the other side of the field. I go running to have the CFK player pulled and when I get there he shoots the FO player that shot him; commence cluster fuck. After a bit of arguing everything is sorted out, CFK get a penalty, no point, which then in turn lands a player getting a suspension for spiking his mask. Awesome...

Friday – This day was nothing but Open division games and could have been a rather successful day, notice I said could have been. First, before noon I started getting a pretty bad headache and after spending several minutes asking around for Advil, I get it from the one person I couldn't appreciate more for giving it to me, the coach/owner of Impact, Bart. Not only did he give me Advil but also Pedalite to drink to help with my dehydration. Seriously, there are so few people like him in this sport and it's amazing that he would go out of his way for the refs. The best thing I've ever seen at a paintball tournament this day and it was when All-Stars International went on the field with a paintball gun bow and arrow and a paintball pistol for their last point of the tourney. It was seriously the funniest thing I've ever watched and nothing could ever top it. I was feeling great all the way up to the last match. Somehow, someway Jax Warriors and Miami Rage were scheduled to play each other. If I ever needed proof of God's Wrath, this was it. I can't begin to describe how bad this match was despite Rage's opportunity to end the damn thing when they were up 7 to 2 at the end of the first half. It was penalties galore, screaming galore and my headache came back in full force before the match was over. Rage pulled it out 9 to 6 and did so with at least two people in the box for a majority of the second half.

Saturday – We finished up Saturday morning with the last of the Open prelim games and from there things went shitty on us. After knocking out our first Open semi game, we had to sit around for nearly an hour to get score sheets for the D3 semifinals. Soon, we got fed up with waiting and wrote the scores down on a spare score sheet we had lying around. Everything proceeded normally till the monsoon came in during the Vicious vs. Texas Justice League game. The down pour was so bad you couldn't see anything so Jake calls it and we wait for everything to clear up. During that wait lightning decides to strike several times, now we have to wait longer. Then Disney calls and says that we have to leave because of the lightning; now here is where the real fun begins. Rosie was there helping out and he's on the phone talking with someone and tells us to stick around. Another bolt of lightning strikes and we're told once again to leave but Rosie says the opposite and we go in the player's pit and sit waiting to see what the fuck is going on. Finally, we get the go ahead from Rosie to finish the JL game but the match that was supposed to follow will be played tomorrow. The match ends with TJL as the winners going on to the Finals and I go back to the hotel soaked from head to toe.

Sunday – This is it, the last day of the biggest tournament of the year. Everything you worked for, everything you strived for and everything you've wanted since you started playing paintball comes to a head right here. You and your buddies will forever be champions and this moment will be with you for the rest of your life. As for me, I'll be standing on the side watching the whole thing unfurl, sharing both the victory and defeat vicariously through all those players knowing exactly what it took to be there that day. This would have been a good day overall if wouldn't have been the extra four matches that felt like was dumped on us. It felt like we were given no breaks at all on a day that is unforgiving in regards to mistakes being made on the field. As angry and frustrated as it made me to be reffing those extra matches knowing that there was all kinds of down time on other fields, I did them anyway and did so to the best of my ability. I was paid to do a job and I did the job come rain or shine or 5-man, which I didn’t have to do this event, hurrah! The day ended with Avalanche, Entourage and Speedin Dirty being the winners of the event, congratulations to them. Also I managed to get an Impact jersey from Bart and it's pretty damn sweet.

Well, that's that. I've now refereed an entire season for PSP and a total of seven events. I would like to thank Tim for sticking with me and hiring me event after event. I would like to thank Marlene for being so good to me and helping us out. I would like to thank all the guys I reffed those events with and being part of the crew. I would like to thank Amos, Diaz, Travis, Pig Pen, Jake, Becky, Smalls, Drew, Dexter, Jeb, Old Dave and everyone else for their hard work and all the memories that will last me the rest of my life. I wish you all the best and hope to see you next season.