CSP - ARUBA

GALERIA DE FOTOS / PHOTO GALLERY | PORTUGUÊS

23 teams coming from Aruba, Brazil, Curaçau, United States, Holland, Peru and Venezuela were present at the second 2008 CSP turnament on April 12th. and 13th. in the paradisiac island of Aruba in the Caribean.

The high technical level of the participants was undoubtfully the big attraction of this tournament organized by Indy Chan, owner of Hot Triggers store and captain of the Aruba Madness team, which more experienced players worked as referees under th supervision of Darryl Trent of Smart Parts/DLX.

The event was held at Indy's field, with turf, brand new Sup'Air Ball bunkers, air at 4000 psi, grandstand for the public, Hot Trigger store on site, good food and a lot of tents with tables and chairs to comfortably accomodate the players. The big difficulty faced by the foreign players, however, was to play in the hot weather thinking about the magnificent beaches so close to the field. Well, most teams arrived a few days earlier and stayed a few days after the tournament taking the opportunity to spend some wonderful vacations snorkeling diving, windsurfing, riding paraglider, catamarans or simply sitting on the sand admiring the view while drinking piña colada. There's so much you can do in that place... Paintball? Oh, yes... that's why we went to Aruba!

On Friday evening there was a vey cool captain's meeting at Hooters restaurant with free beer, sodas and barbecue wings to the players. they all agreed that Indy is the best tournament organizer, because he really understands player's needs and wishes. Of ourse they were referring to the wings, and not to the waitresses in shorts! Darryl, now director of DLX, Smart Parts division specialized in very hi end equipment, walked around proudly exibiting his red Luxe prototype, explaining about its amazing features, showing that taking out the bolt was easir and faster than opening a soda can, that it speaks 4 languages, etc, just like a daddy talking about his little girl's qualities but not leting anybody playing with her. He said it was a prototype an it was not yet ready to play with.

Unlike in Equador CSP, the public in Aruba was very active! Each team had a large number of people to cheer for them and it was like habving a lot of turnaments at the same time: one inside the field and some others outside it with people almot killing themselves to be heard bythe players. The mess was so big that I sincerely doubt that the player could understand what was being yelled at them and make use of so much information. Sometimes the competition outside the field became a little too hot when a group decided to ruin the communication between the rival group and the team. It was like a kind of war where some acted as spies giving wrong information to a team just to take their attention from the real action. Can anything more irritating than this?

Aruba has very good teams, but many of them use the same very long name and same uniforms, making it very difficult to remember who had a good performance or what happened in the tournament. Aruban Unpredictable Assassins had 2 teams in the Open division and one in the Amateur, all good teams. Spyder sent team Bad Company, which played with Spyders. Bad Company's captain, Tom Cole, NPPL ex-president and current diretor and also resonsible for Kingman/Spyder's Business Development department,played at team Mercenarios, along with Tony, Daniel, Gustavo e Zeca. Rapinas, the other Braziian team, hosted Guga, Rafinha, Kiko, André, Xalo and Miko. In the U.S. Xalo and Miko play at Iron Men; in Brazil Xaloplays at Jungle Boys, with Zeca that was playing at Mercenários. Bad Company, Iron Men, Mercenarios, Rapinas and Jungle Boys. Mixed players forming brother teams that supported eachother without rivalry. But don't fool yourself. they behave like this only when they play abroad.

With a lot of very experienced teams playing the referees have to be ruffer and the penalties were very high. Many times those penalties seriously displeased the players causing some adverse reactions like Perupaintball's that abandoned the competition (I think it was an excuse to go to the beache) and Tony's that got a 50 point penalty to team Mercenarios.

In Aruba we had a Rookie division, with players using field rental markers or mechanocal markers like Tippmanns and Spyders. That was Indy's great idea and a big encouragement for the formation of new teams. In this division there wasw only one round and the one with highest points won: Team Aruba Bank Insane Shooters.

For the other divisions the preliminaire round ended and the best four of each division went to the semi-finals, where the'd play best of three matches.

Open: Rapinas 826 points, Bad Company 704 points, Mercenários 646 points e Unpredictable Assassins Red 532 points.
Amateur: AMK 696 points, MAK 610 points, Kanoa Warriors 538 points, Unpredictable Assassins Green 522 points.

At this phase the 1st. would play against the 3rd. and the 2nd. against the 4th. The winners of eah game would dispute 1st. and 2nd. places at the finals and the other twowuld play for third and fourth places.

Rapinas and Mercenários played the frist match with victory to Mercenários, but on the second match team Rapinas won generating a third match that ended with Rapinas's victory. Bad Company defeated the Unpredictable Assassins.

In the Amateur division AMK won the first match against the Unpredictable Assassins Green, but lost the ohter two. Kanoa Warriors lost 2 matches for team MAK and there was no third match.

The final round started and the sun was going down projecting long shadows on the turf torturing the players that were against the low sun with the light in their eyes. Rapinas x Bad Company and MAK x Unpredictable Assassins Green could still play best of three, but the refs decided that there wouldn't be enough light to make the remaining games so Mercenários x Unpredictable Assassins Red and AMK x Kanoa Warriors played only one game each.

FINAL RESULTS: