PSP Northeast Open 2008

Hello to everyone out there and once again I have written up another somewhat entertaining event review for your viewing, no, reading, no, would it be "viewing" or "reading," oh who cares, pleasure. Now, I know I didn't do a write up for PSP Chicago back in June so I'll give you all a quick rundown on what it was like: crummy weather then hot then hot again then hurricane winds then hot again. The Chicago tourney overall was ok, maybe I was a little bummed because my birthday was Thursday of the event and who the hell wants to ref on their birthday? But let's get to the heart of the matter, PSP NEO, which was held at Smart Parts' All American Park somewhere near Pittsburgh, PA and I don't feel like wasting any more time.

Wednesday - Fly out of Houston at 8:30AM for Charlotte where I'll make an eventual connection up to Pittsburgh. Due to rising oil prices which effect EVERYTHING, I had to go cheap on my plane ticket and the cheapest tickets I could find at the time were with US Airways. All I can say about US Airways is this; I hope they go under soon. If anyone who reads this works for US Airways or has a relative/family member/loved one who works for that particular airline, I'm sorry but you or they need to find a new job because US Air sucks. I had to pay $15 just to put my bag on the plane and every damn person who flies on that airline brings a carry-on luggage so it takes forever just to get on the damn plane. We were late leaving Charlotte because several individuals refused to put their carry-ons in the hold. One guy got so pissed off he threw his bag on the floor of the plane and kicked it underneath his seat, what an ass. Finally get to Pittsburgh around 4:30PM and then sit around the airport with Amos, Ian, Seth and Benson for another two and a half hours till we get picked up by Dave Baker. We then drive for another hour to Greensburg (where the actual event is being held) and then I'm driven 5 more miles to where I'm staying with Travis, Jake, Pete and Cindy in New Stanton. Once there, I wait with Travis and Jake for two more hours till Pete and Cindy drive in from Minnesota. Overall, it was an exciting day in sitting...[/sarcasm].

Thursday - Wake up around 5:45AM to drive out to the event which starts at 7AM. We get there to find out that the refs don't even get to park at the event, Pete has to park his car elsewhere and a shuttle will take him back to the event, this is just the beginning of an exciting, bullshit packed event. Pete drops us off, we check in, grab jerseys and head off to our respective fields. Once again I'm on the D1 field (Dye) with the usual crew with some new additions. At this event it was Amos, Jeb, Smalls, Jake, Pig Pen, Logan, Paulie and myself. The new guys to the crew were O-town, Jimbo and Martin making 11 total refs, which ended up being great because for the first time we had a rotation so everyone got a break. Finally got a chance to take a look at the layout and the dorito side was anything but ref friendly. I got destroyed this event, easily, and there were hardly any safe spots. Anyway, started out with six D1 one matches and moved through them pretty easily. Probably the most exciting game was CDR vs RNT with CDR winning 5-4 and Ore from RNT being suspended from the event for spiking his gun, which was very nice of him.

After that came D2 and that's when things started getting interesting and by "interesting" I mean "bad." At this event we had a new scorekeeper, who is no where near as good as Becky is. Even though Jarred is an experienced board operator he hardly pays attention to what the hell is going on and when you have Clipboard (we didn't know his name for the first two days so we called him Clipboard) not knowing what the hell he's doing either, things go ary. In a match between Infectious (Dirty needles! lol) and DC Confidential the score switched FOUR times and by that I mean at first the score was 2-1, then 1-2, then 4-1, then finally settled on 2-1. We had a pow-wow about what the score should be and all the refs agreed it should have been 3-1 Infectious but Clipboard's scoresheet said otherwise. Also sometime during the D2 matches a huge thunderstorm came in and we had to stop games because of the lightening and the field went to shit, I can't put it any simpler than that. Then things seemed to get real sloppy as we progressed through our schedule into D3. In one match between HKN and somebody else we threw 6 majors, six! The games themselves were just ridiculously bad and were becoming an annoyance. All of which we blamed on Logan as he filled in the spot of the person who was sitting out. Screw you Logan and your shitty mojo. We finished up our schedule and then were moved to the NXL field which had lights to mix up with other refs from other fields and proceeded to ref till 10:30PM...10:30PM! That's 15 hours of reffing tournament paintball! Now I've done 10 hours and even 12 but 15 hours, my God there's no way of describing of how tired I felt. Finally, finished for the day we went back to the hotel, had a snack, showered and went to bed.

Friday - Pretty much the same exact same as Thursday from beginning to end. I got to sit out during the Damage vs Vicious game as it was my turn due to the rotation and it ended up being a blow out with Damage winning 7-1, which kinda pissed me off as I was hoping to sit around for awhile. Logan, however, sits out for nearly a freaking hour thanks to another screw up by Clipboard. Damn you yet again Logan. No real problems really other than the field, primarily the snake, going to shit thanks to the rain on Thursday. Another late finish after going to the NXL field to help with the night games.

Saturday - This may have been the worst day of reffing I ever experienced in my career as a referee. Now, I have worked in hot, cold and wet weather and I have had players and coaches threaten me with bodily harm and curse dead relatives I didn't even know I had but nothing compares to this particular Saturday. Started the day on time for a change with 4 D1 matches, no big deal. We finished an hour and a half behind due to all 4 of them went to time. Next, was two brackets of D4 5-man. Now, the past two times I've reffed D4 5-man, it was probably the easiest stuff I've ever done but that's only because I haven't done that massive of an amount of 5-man before this day. We killed the first bracket and went from being an hour and a half behind to just under 30 minutes behind, that's how much ass we kick as refs. We went through a total of 67 games out of a possibly 87 games and managed to almost catch up (in this situation I can use the phrase "catch up" quite liberally because being 30 minutes behind in tournament paintball is fairly normal). Problem is that was just one bracket, we still had another to go but this one was smaller by 27 possible total games to be played. To top it off we have to ref it two guys down meaning we go from 11 to 9. We finish it as well with the sun going down, exhaustion setting in and nowhere near done. We pack everything up and replace the entire Smart Parts field and run their games for them in an effort to catch up. To be fair we didn't run all of their games as we switched out every so often but we ran a majority of their bracket. After Smart Parts came NXL field where once again we substituted their entire crew for ours finally finishing at 12:30AM. Now, let me make sure you understand this, we started working Saturday, August 16th at 7:00AM and we finished Sunday, August 17th at 12:30AM. That's 17 and a half hours of refereeing paintball! The only way I can express how I felt after that is that both the Devil and Death walked up to me and one kicked me in the balls with the other kicking me in the face at the same time. Never again will I do something like this. I will feign illness, injury or both at the same time to get out of this. I will commit a crime that causes me to get arrested so I will not have to ref paintball for 17 and a half hours. I will not explicitly point my finger and blame someone for this atrocity, I will let them stew in their own juices of guilt and angst for making us do this. I would say I wish I wasn't good at reffing so I'd never have to do this but the problem is that I'm not any good, just better than the ones we have currently...

Sunday - After 17 and a half hours (yeah, I mentioned it again) and about 5 hours of sleep, we head back to the field to ref D1-3 finals and consolation, which total at about 8 matches altogether. We got a "late" start at 8AM and people still didn't show up on time. We reffed the first match borrowing refs from other fields just so we could start on time. Half way through the day I started falling asleep so I chugged half a bottle of coke (the beverage for you northerners) just so I could stay awake. We roll right through, finish at around 4PM and do so terribly exhuasted. We turn everything in and I go grab a beer with Roy Sears and managed to miss two rides back to the hotel but it was ok because I sat around with a bunch of the Air/Set-up guys and they're hilarious. Finally get picked up, grab my stuff from the hotel, shower at Amos' hotel and then get in a long conversation with Dave Baker about how and who is going to the airport as we only have one car, fun stuff.

Monday - At around 12:30AM we figure out who is going on the first run to the airport. Travis, Jake and Benson all need to go as they have 6AM flights and I volunteer also to go as I really don't want to sleep in Amos' room as it was fucking filthy. We arrive at the airport at 2AM, walk in and try to sleep on a semi-circle bench in the check-in lobby of the airport. Jake, Benson and Travis all check in and I'm left alone for the next couple of hours. I slept on another bench that was closer to the US Airways counter before Amos, Pig Pen, Ian and Seth finally arrived. We all sleep around one of the departure boards and Ian and I hear some lady say, "Why can't they just sleep at home," which causes me to laugh hysterically. Around 9:30 everyone starts to stir and the airport is starting to get real busy. We sit around talk about various bullshit and then move over to a glass divider that overlooks the security walk through and watch Strange Wilderness on Pig Pen's laptop. It was a pretty funny movie but I probably think that due to the sleep deprevation. We go through security at 1PM, grab some lunch and then eventually head to our respective terminals to fly home. After another connection in Charlotte I get home at 9:30PM and go straight to bed, tired beyond reason.

Well, that's it, another event review of an event I never ever want to do again. Thanks for taking the time to read and to all my friends in reffing, I hope to see you guys soon.