Another step closer

Hello again,

Since I posted the introductions we have progressed a little which is great and another step closer to our objectives in 2012.

We have discussed some feedback and changes on the suggested Logo of Tanked for the Samurai jersey and they are looking into this as I am writing this. This will be the last bit I need to send out my sponsorship letters/presentation to the companies I would love to ask for support for our plans in 2012.

Next up is the charity activities "pre-2012" and this was an IMPRESSIVE success over last few days. Last Sunday was the 1^st Round of the Bricketwood Paintball Center – Winter Series. It is an “off season” series organized by Yorkie (the site manager) to keep us in the game. November will be round 2 and final round is in December with a Christmas Party in the evening which collects donations throughout the evening and then give it to a charity of their choice – Yorkie approached us Sunday during the tournament and told us that after speaking to the boy and girls during the tournament about Samurai MV and out plans for next year to give the money to our charity. Next thing I hear is that one of the teams participating (named: "STD Paintball Team") was giving us their “financial leftovers” from the team savings of the season. I must say it was a great moment – we haven’t even started our campaign and already have received a huge support from players, friends and fans. SO thanks again to:

Our next trainings will be on the 6^th and 13^th of November and by we will be looking at orders more details and schedules for 2012 which I can already let you know some small details about …

One charity activity per month like i.e. an auction, 2-3 Paintball for Charity events (open invitation to play paintball and money goes to the CF Trust for every player on the field), travel to Germany, France and US to raise awareness and also funds … so it will be a packed year, but I think it will be just as rewarding in the end.

Wish us luck with our sponsorship hunt now – since this is the big variable at the moment.

Talk soon!

First Introductions ...

As usual in the beginning – introductions are in order … so here we go:

My name is James and I play for a tournament paintball team in the London area in the UK which is named Samurai MV. Tournament paintball is a bit different to the “normal” paintball sites or events you would go to when you are going for a birthday party, company event or stag/hen due. It’s a sport we play and train for throughout the year with proper tournaments, series, European and World Cups. For more information I can recommend to visit http://www.millennium-series.com/, which is the European Paintball Championship – there are loads more in the UK, Germany and France that have proper leagues etc. – but I think I might get into that at a later stage as well once we start talking about our 2012 plan.

So - Samurai MV is one of a few teams playing under the Samurai Paintball banner. Samurai Paintball was founded in 2005 and has been going strong – in 2007 Samurai MV was formed in memory of Martin Vipas, a player of samurai who tragically passed away after having suffered from Cystic Fibrosis. In the first seasons Samurai MV (and the other Samurai teams) started raising funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust on all the events they played … and for 2012, 5 years later, we would like to relaunch this initiative to raise funds once again – this time just on a much larger scale, but more of that shortly.

Personally I have only played paintball roughly 2 years, and the rest of the squad started more or less in 2008 – which makes us a very young team in experience. On the other side our players ages range from 25 to 40 years, which is rather on the “older” side compared to other squads out in the sport. We have had quite a good run over the last 2 years winning the 1^st place in the UK Masters Series in 2010 and finishing the same league 2^nd this year and the season “closing event” for the Masters (Shoot the Rainbow) was always on the top 3 podium positions in the last 2 years as well … so we seem to have a base that we can work with.

What is the purpose of all this – really simple – for 2012 we are planning to start a large scale launch of raising funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust by playing 2 domestic and 2 international tournament series in UK, Germany and France – finishing the year in October by flying and participating in the 2012 PSP Worldcup in Orlando, Florida … and this Blog will be a part of a documentation of this journey.

• The charity website is started: CHECK - yesterday you can see everything needed for making donations on the right hand side!

• The Logo’s and jerseys are designed: CHECK - Something I will reveal in one of the next posts ...

• First Support & Sponsorships have been settled: CHECK

BUT – we are on the look for a financial sponsor to support us in the costs of making this journey come true. So this will be the big breaking news if this goes through.

Last but not least I would like to ask you all to just head over to Facebook and get on our Facebook page (Samurai Paintball) to see what is going on – see pictures of the boys and girls and get some updates prior to 2012.

I will be back on the weekend with some updates on how things are progressing with the prep-work. We still need the financial sponsor, will have a try-out for some more people on the Samurai MV team for next season and then also the final details of what we will be doing 2012.