In a display of sheer dedication, Eastern’s paintball team left campus at 5:15 a.m. Saturday to arrive in McLean, Ill., by 7:45, an hour before the Midwest Intercollegiate Tournament XVI was to begin. The tournament, which was hosted by Illinois State University, featured 11 schools and 22 paintball teams.

Last year’s tournament was Eastern’s first and they took second place, losing to host ISU.

The tournament featured two different fields, the first being a tournament-style Xball field, which is used by professionals.

“We are very used to that field set up,” said Josh Norman, Eastern alum who is the club’s president.

The second was a “sup-air” field, or a custom field, that is not set up in any particular format.

“It’s kind of thrown together,” Norman said. “It’s a lot more aggressive field because the lanes are wide open.”

Eastern entered two teams, Panthers and Panthers Black, with the former team being the most experienced. Each team had five players.

Both teams started out well, winning their first matches with Panthers Black winning without losing a man, or “maxed out”. The teams diverged from there, however, with the Panthers Black team losing their next two games, which Herman Ruiz, senior history major who plays on the Panthers Black squad, said “wasn’t pretty.”

Norman said Panthers Black lost a guy on the break each game and that hurt the team’s chances of winning.

The “break” takes place at the beginning of the match because each member of the team is required to line up at the rear of the field marked by a small wooden fence. Each player must have their hand on the fence, and when the referees starts the game, the paintballers break from their position and move into the field.

The Panthers squad went undefeated in the preliminary round, finishing 8-0.

Jim Piorkowski, sophomore physical education major, said many of Eastern’s team members play professionally as opposed to most college paintball teams, and this makes Eastern’s team more competitive.

Piorkowski said Eastern’s team practices over the summer because the team members live close to one another. He said this unusual for college teams.

After starting out 1-2, the Panthers Black team battled back by winning their next two games and then lost a very close match to University of Illinois’ Illini delicious, which was undefeated at the time. The team took the next two matches as well and just barely squeezed into the semi-finals as the last of eight teams.

The Panthers squad, on the other hand, advanced in impressive fashion by taking first place in preliminary rounds.

What happened next was one of the most bizarre moments in Eastern’s short paintball tenure.

Because one of Eastern’s teams finished first and the other finished eighth, they were forced to face each other in the semi-finals. For the benefit of the team as a whole, they decided to throw the game in favor of team Panthers, the more experienced of the squads.

There was a financial aspect as well. Because Eastern’s paintball team has only one sponsor, Norman Paintball, and paintballs themselves are costly, the team figured it would be cheaper not to waste paintballs and instead finish the match quickly.

A box of 2,000 paintballs costs $55 at the tournament and over 500 paintballs are used in a game, Norman said.

The referees concurred to Eastern’s proposal, but after further reviewing the rules after the match, the refs accused the Panthers Black squad of point shaving and forced them to forfeit the rest of its games. Each team that was supposed to play the Panthers Black squad, including the Panthers, received a bye for that game.

The Panthers squad made it into the finals round by destroying University of Illinois’ Illini n00b Cannons and Illini delicious.

Going into the final round, the Panthers squad was very confident.

“For the final round, I expect teams to try desperately to beat us but to fail,” Captain August Figliulo, junior English major said.

Unfornately, Figliulo spoke to soon. In a rematch from last year’s final round, the Panthers team lost to Illinois State University’s Redbirds Black, and not a single Redbird player was shot in the match.

“We knew what to expect,” Piorkowski said. “I’m surprised they beat us 5-alive,” referring to Eastern’s inability to get a Redbird player out.

Eastern beat the Black squad earlier in the day, but in a painful deja-vu moment for the club, the Panthers squad couldn’t beat them when it mattered most.

“It’s just seemed like everything went wrong at once,” Figliulo said. “And it never happened again.”

Eastern went on to beat Southern Illinois University’s Saluki squad in the next match, but after the Redbird Black squad once again flawlessly beat the Illini n00b squad, the fate of the tournament was sealed. The Panthers beat the Illinois n00b squad as well but by then it wasn’t enough, ending the tournament in an “anti-climatic” matter, Norman said.

The Panthers took second place, but Figliulo was still a little bitter at the team’s only loss.

“We beat every major team here, including our rivals, and the one game we drop ends the whole tournament for us,” Figliulo said.

“We can’t be too upset about second place because both teams finished in the top eight,” he said, “However we are very disappointed we lost to ISU.”

Next time, he said, it will be a “blood bath.”

-For the video from the tournament, click here.

-For pictures from the tournament, click here.