CURE FOR BETTER REFFING
This is an older article I did for Faceful magazine but it’s very relavant today. Starting or owning a paintball field means you get to deal with people. You get to see very interesting sides of people when you put them in competitive situations. As more and more paintball field owners put in turf ( we like Money Turf the best) and upgrade their tournament fields, we see more and more of the competitive spirit. This spirit can be enraged when a bad call is made. So how do avoid all this? Read on for a few suggestions.
With the whole JOY DIVISION Controversy going on in the NPPL I think it’s fitting to revisit the “daily topic” about tournament paintball reffing.
Please note if you follow the NBA, NFL , MLB or the NHL it really is the same story. From the game fixing issues in the NBA to the NFL’s use of instant replay which still doesn’t eliminate bad calls. As well as MLB’s umpire issues and even Hockeys inconsistent reffing. If your talking sports your always talking about the BAD CALLS.
The biggest challenge paintball faces is that the way the game is played now it is
“ IMPOSIBLE” to reff. If you know me you know I hate to use the word impossible but in this case it’s true.
The guns are too fast for the human eye, the action is too spread out there is no ball or puck to follow, the action can came from anywhere leaving even a good reff totally out of position.
In an earlier article I proposed a format solution called “ Moneyball” which basically forces the action around the flag and makes reffing much easier to do. But what about Xball , everyone knows the reffing is better in the PSP. I disagree, the format is better suited for reffing in the PSP. I.E. we know there are going to be bad calls but with the xball format you are only losing a point vs.a whole game in the NPPL. The NPPL has changed the number of games played and basically said hey, now you get more games to over come the bad calls.
So the question remains how do we eliminate the “ Bad calls” ? This is where I’m suppose to suggest the same stuff we have already heard, pay the reffs more, train them more, give them more rest and water, keep the same crews together bla,bla,bla.
The only way to reff an un-reffable game is to “change” wait that’s to strong of a word for a tournament player, how about “tweak”, let’s “ tweak” the format so even a half blind heat stoke afflicted reff could make the right call.
Here are some possible “ tweaks” that would make tournament paintball a better game to reff.
# 1. Head shots only. What if you were only eliminated by a head shot? Much easier for a reff to focus on one area only. A majority of the time it would be a goggle shot which is much easier to spot. Unless your Mike Paxson during a paintball video( inside joke).
Now before you e-mail me with 500 reasons why this is dumb your missing the point. Tournament paintball is broken, let’s try to fix it. Instead e-mail me with 500 ideas that you have to make it better. In fact I will URGE the editor to print the best ideas you come up with. E-mail your intelligent ideas to : evan.money@verizon.net I delete all profanity laced and derogatory e-mails FYI.
# 2. Smaller and less bunkers on the field. What if you made the bigger safer bunkers far and few between, which forced action in certain areas. Why give the back players a big safe place to hide , force to people to move farther off the breaks to the safer bunkers.
Ok so there are two ideas for “tweaks” now I put it in your hands to see what you can come up with.