Alright guys you may have heard this before, but it seems like not enough people have. As a refferee at a large feild here in Ohio my number one concern is of course safety, that is infact our goal as reffs is to provide a safe environment in which the players, of all ages, backgrounds, and skill level, can come and have fun. But my main concern here is not your safety on my feilds, but on yours. all too often I hear players talking about how they play at home: shooting point blank, or they want more excitment, so they crank their velocity up so high often our chronos dont read it correctly. Or players with malfunctioning equipment, i.e. poor lenses in their goggles. Ive seen everything from small gouges, to cracks, to a player who had driven screws through the lenses to make them "look bad-ass" if you try to look bad ass like that ill tell you right now u wont be playing on my feilds until you get a pair of rental goggles. so im ging to brek down my main concerns, as ive seen them for you:
Poor Equipment
Your equipment needs to be kept in top-notch condition, especially your lenses. Too often I see players who will play with damaged, broken, or stupidly modified goggles and lenses, i find this unnacceptable and will ask players to either rent, or borrow a pair of goggles, or sit out of play until they do. If your goggles have cracks, or gouges in them you need to have them replaced or you could wind up with serious injuries. Paintball lenses are designed specificly for paintball, and undergo rigorus safety testing before they are allowed to be sold to players, so if you have damage to your goggles, a good, solid, hard hit to your lenses may cause them to shatter, and plastic shards and paint in your eyes will do some serious damage. So if your at your local feild and you see someone with unsafe equipment, please point it out to your reff, and the same goes for at home, dont allow your friends to play with bad equipment. Another major thing i see is ill fitting goggles which can be just as damgerous if they are shot off of your head, or if they fall into your face and obstruct your vision.
Stupid players
Now that title may have been a little harsh, but lets face it, most players are stupid at some point in time during the day be it cranked velocity, shooting too close, looking down the barrel, ect.
Shooting hot All too often i hear players talk about how when they play at home they will crank their velocities way up, and ive played with players who did this. Not only is this unsafe, but it is a good way to scare new players off. When shooting in excess of safe speed limits (285-300 fps [feet per second]) you are risking not only severe physical pain and or damage, especially if at close range, but you could also damage, or break someones lenses, and with the speed at which todays markers can shoot that could be big trouble, because lets say the first shot breaks the players lenses, or nocks his goggles off his head, well he's in a pickle, but now he also has to deal with the other 14 balls that will hit him in the next one second, this player is in big trouble and probobly hurt pretty badly. A good way to keep yourselves safe is to have everyone in your group chip in and buy a pocket chronograph these run from $70-$90 and are an invaluable safety tool. Now lets say your group is all too young to work, and you cant get any cash from mom what do you do? a good way to get a ballpark velocity setting is to have one player stand behind a peice of plywood or something of the sort, then a player with a known safe velocity shoots the board, followed by another player, if the second player's hit is louder, they need to turn their velocity down. now this isnt exactly a precise way to chrono your guns, but it's better to play a little hot than extremely hot.
Shooting foriegn objects Another story i hear way too often is people who shoot things other than paintballs through their markers, at other players! I've heard of people bragging about everything from hotdogs, to rocks, marbles, and removable football cleats! DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES SHOOT ANYTHING OTHER THAN A PAINTBALL AT ANYTHING! ESPECIALLY ANOTHER PLAYER OR AN ANIMAL! This cannot be stressed enough. Shooting objects like the aforementioned could seriously injure or even kill another player.
Amen Renegade storm, The reason this sport has so few injuries is thanks to Dedicated Refs that will not only try their best to keep other players safe while they are on their own feild but as well as one they are off it.
One thing to add to the shooting hot
If your going to be playing alot on a field in your back yard it never hurts to buy a pocket chrono graph. These are not that expensive either, $80 being split amongst your friend that play with you will help and keep you and others you play with safe
I'm sorry sir, didn't mean to do that, just kidding around, I guess some people are stupid enough to do that though and apperently have. And the only reason I added marshmellows was because, I was thinking of those marshmellow guns you blow into. I would never, ever fire a hot dog out of a marker, its just plain stupid. And I know, If its not made to go into a paintball gun, dont put it in there. Sorry for the stupid post.
the shooting hot paragraph cannot be stressed enough. the last time
i played backyard ball i brought my chrono to be on the safe side.
my good friend from work insisted i wouldn't need it as everyone was
a "seasoned" player and clearly knew the 280fps rule. as soon as we
setup i kindly asked everyone to "chrono up" or i was going home.
well wouldn't you know.....3 guys well over 300...one guy at 337
at the field sunday one kid chrono'd at 360 !,yes 360
should have seen the look on the ref's face. (this was a pregame chrono) thank god.
thought for sure he was gonna be tossed out before we even started.
no, i was running the chrono station, like i said that dosent seem possible, so i think it weirded out the chrono
Hottest I have seen while running crono was 550s and that was even after I shot it over 3 other "big red" chronos so see if one was broken. At that speed it will not read on the pocket chrons and may show up as an error or seem safe/
Also one thing that has come up amongst the other Refs I work with is our pocket chronos have a good bit of variation (~±13fps with 7 different chronos on the same gun), Also the same pocket chronos read lower then the "Big red"s we use at the chrono station by about 5-15 FPS.
Most Excellent thread! I would even say Dead Thread, if the topic was not so vitally important to the survival of our sport.
I have one other topic to add to this:
Shooting At UnAcceptable Targets
It seems like once a month I read a story on one of the many internet news sites about how a bunch of kids, or a couple of drunk frats, or just some random guy got arrested for shooting at a skunk, or some stray dogs down the street, or the new public library.
How can our sport expect to become (and stay) mainstream, or even legal for that matter, if stupid people insist on doing stupid things with their paintball markers.
It'll be a bunch of nubs like these who end up ruining the sport for the rest of us.
Safety at home
My Feedback:
