Fire and Ice

My Goodness – its almost March I have not posted anything since early February!!! SHAME SHAME SHAME … since so much has been going on.

Although things were heating up towards round 1 of the domestic tournament called CPPS, the temperature has dropped and Bricketwood Paintball Center had to shut down for two weekends due to the pitches had frozen with so much ice we would have needed some skates to play … interesting idea for the future of the sport … however not a great idea in preparing for the CPPS or the Millenniums.

We had a Samurai MV training weekend over the 25^th/26^thFeb which was needed before the CPPS next week – where Saturday only 5 of us were on the field doing some drills, SUNDAY was crazy absolute fortunate and crazy. Sunday we unluckily didn’t have the chance to train at our home ground Bricketwood Paintball Center, since there was another tournament going on – but we found an alternative and although there was no new bunkers or 2012 layout – we had another group of guys there, small number of "old" Shock and SPL Tiger players which will be playing the SPL next year and they asked us for some games. This was a godsend – we lost every point, our best effort was a G3 … but boy was that a learning curve. A big shout out to the SPL Tigers (which are "rocking" Planet Eclipse in 2012!!!) for the games again and see you @ the Millenniums.

Sad news … NSPL taking a break in 2012

Although this thread is about our journey, I think a big part of our journey is the UK Paintball scene and the NSPL being a pillar of this scene deserves a moment of our attention.

The NSPL is sorely missed this year and I wish Syd and the NSPL Reffs & Supporters a good rest this year to have an even stronger re-launch in 2013 – maybe under a new national flag or UKPSF driven initiative supported and funded by the players that understand that quality events can not be financed by discount price models – the more you give into the bidding and pricing war of the organizers the more you will join in and destroy the tournament paintball scene … something too little of us understand or have been made aware of.

My motto for this coming year will be on the lines of …
“One Queen, One League –Demand a BPL! British Paintball League”
Demand it – then play it – and be loyal to it. We will be able to grow this sport larger than you can imagine. I hope people will find a way to put their differences aside and make this finally happen … the UK scene deserves ONE national league.

Feb 2012 - Press Release

Last "training free" weekend over

First proper Samurai MV training is this coming Sunday – and of course the temperatures have dropped below “0” this week. But that is not bothering anyone, because there is so much great and fun stuff happening at the moment!!!

Coming up - Training on the 22^nd January

We are expecting a new addition to the team – a coach, which I will be revealing at a later stage in the coming weeks. This will help us on areas we need to work on individually and as a team, which we all know is going to be an important factor for us in the future – even beyond the 2012 season. As usual this will be all happening at the Bricketwood Paintball Center.

Many of the boys have start the year strong with giving up smoking, stopping the fast-food and beginning some “soft exercises” to get ready for the training we will be starting in the coming weeks. Some training plans for during the week have been drawn up, schedules for training and travel plans for the first events in March are already squared away and now it comes down to us to turn the heat on.

Also as a little “surprise” for the team – we will have a guest from the Cystic Fibrosis Trust coming to meet and greet us at lunchtime to see what we are up to and bring us some materials we can use for the charity activities. This will give the team a chance to ask some questions and details on what the money we will be raising will be used for and what the current situation of the research and treatment of Cystic Fibrosis is – it will give us all a good idea of the bigger picture in what our efforts will result in. So exciting day indeed …

Sponsors/supporters update

The 15^th of the January has arrived and we “unluckily” have not received any confirmation on any of the sponsorship proposals we have sent out to the companies we approached – all feedback we have received though was really encouraging and between the lines of “Thanks for the interest – your proposal looks really great and it’s a great thing you planned. Unfortunately we are focusing on xyz this year, but would look forward to hear from you end if this year again.” We found this really encouraging and who knows what a 2013/14/15/etc. might bring.

On a positive note – as already “hinted” in the last post, we have won “Tanked” as a supporter for Samurai Paintball, which we will be representing in the 2012 Jersey of all Samurai Paintball teams. I personally have been dealing with them over the last few weeks and can only say that they are a great group of guys and really know their stuff. We are finalising some last things with the jersey design and hopefully will be having an agreed and signed off jersey in production by the end of the month … so watch this space for updates. If you feel you need some awesome jersey’s and haven’t made up your mind yet – have a look on their website or drop them a mail @ www.tanked.tv

Also the new Planet Eclipse EGO’s and GEO’s have a arrived. One of our team techs has played around with some colors we exchanged and came up with some really nice combinations – have a look for yourselves. Check out the full range of their markers and available colors on www.planeteclipse.com

More after the training next week – you all stay safe and warm!!!

Laterz!

It has begun …

First off – A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hope everyone had a good Christmas and a great New Years Eve with family, friends and loved ones. All the best for 2012 and everything you all wished for.

UPDATE OF THE LAST 4 WEEKS

Although we are still in the “off-season” period, “THE GRIND” has literally begun. We have been everything else than lazy over the last weeks and besides waiting the last 10 days to see if we get a positive response on any sponsorships we have been proposing, we are ticking off the boxes on our “To-Do” list pretty much on schedule.

The biggest news of this week is – our NEW LOGO is final and approved. So I hereby present you the new Samurai Paintball logo which we will be wearing with pride for the future, which was sorted out for us by Tanked Paintball, the newest addition to companies that are supporting us starting this season – once we have some jersey designs ready we’ll be showing you all more.

CYSTIC FIBROSIS TRUST

On the charity front we are not even one week in and are on about £ 800,- in the first half of January. This mainly is again thanks to Bricket Wood Paintball and the Christmas party that raised over £700 for us and we received this in the first week of January. Thanks again to Yorkie and his team and Bricket Wood!!! Donna, the charity coordination person for the Greater London area, which works for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust is planning on swinging by at the Training Center on the 22^nd Jan to meet the boys and also sit down and talk about how they can support us in raising funds throughout the year … so we are looking forward to that as well.

SAMURAI MV 2012 TOUR  - Tournaments and dates

Last but not least – the grind begins on the 22^nd January. Everyone is already really jumpy and can’t wait to get back on the field to start training for our first tournament – we are currently working on a training schedule (for the entire 50 remaining weeks of 2012 and the actual training days) which we want to have ready for the team by the 22^nd to hand out. So let’s see how that goes. Our calendar looks as follows:

4^th March 2012            – CPPS (UK League) / Round 1 (Staffordshire, United Kingdom)

23^rd-25^th March 2012 – Millennium Series (EU League) / Riviera Cup (St.Tropez/Cannes, France)

22^nd April 2012            – CPPS (UK League) / Round 2 (Staffordshire, United Kingdom)

25^rd-27^th May 2012    – Millennium Series (EU League)/ European Masters (Bitburg, Germany)

17^th Jun 2012               – CPPS (UK League) / Round 3 (Staffordshire, United Kingdom)

29^th Jun–1^st Jul 2012  – Millennium Series (EU League) / London Masters (London, United Kingdom)

23^rd Sept 2012              – CPPS (UK League) / Round 4 (Staffordshire, United Kingdom)

12^th-14^th Oct 2012     – Millennium Series (EU League) / World Cup (Paris, France)

?? October 2012         – PSP (USA League) / World Cup (Orlando (FL), USA) – to be confirmed

Speaking of fitness & tournaments – 2 of our 4 smokers quit smoking and this is the first week for them without a smoke!!! YOU CAN DO IT BOYS!!! WE ARE PROUD OF YOU!!!

More in a few days – talk soon!

The 2011 season is officially over ... with some great surprises

As you know we have decided to play the Bricketwood Winter Series to give some of our players the chance to sniff out the RaceTo format … so we thought we’ll sign up for Round 3 prior to the Bricketwood Paintball Christmas Party and presentation of the 2011 winners - which included some exciting stuff for us!


WINTER SERIES ROUND 3

In short – let’s just skip the event. Nothing besides a lot of experience gained. Unluckily I was not there personally to break down in detail what happened, but we had a very young team on the field that just received punishment for the lack of their experience vs. the Div. 1 and Pro players.

Luckily none of this seem to have impacted the  Christmas Party in the evening – which I could attend.


BRICKETWOOD CHRISTMAS PARTY 2011

This event was the closing of the 2011 season for all teams. London Nexus, London Tigers, London Relentless, London Defiance – to just mention a few – were happily participating to make this party a success and mingled amongst each other. It is great to see all the passion and effort put in the sport and on the field then is then turned into so much sportsmanship. Rivals stand at the bar together talking and laughing about the hard fought points and matches throughout the season with a smile on their face.

The highlight of the event for us, Yorkie (Bricketwood Manager) and the team Relentless Paintball presented us with the “Bricketwood Paintball – Team of the year 2011” award. I took the chance to thank everyone for the opportunity and explained them a bit about where Samurai MV” originated from, Martin Vipas and our plans for 2012 to raise £ 30.000 for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

We were absolutely delighted and again Yorkie highlighted to some of us in the team later that evening that Darren, coach and manager, was just going above and beyond in getting new players in the sport and having done a great job in 2011 to raise our profile in the tournament paintball scene for beginners. Relentless having also had this prize last year congratulated us and wished us the best of luck with our target of raising £ 30.000 for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust next year – they also kindly offered support for next year in handing out flyers for our cause to locations where they will be travelling to. I have to pull my hat off to Relentless Paintball – absolute genuine gentlemen and looking forward to see more of them live at the Millenniums in 2012.


SPONSORSHIP 2012

3 weeks after sending the proposals, we received the first rejections. I am really happy we are getting responses at all – so it seems people are reading it. =)

By the 15^th January 2012 we will know what will be happening in 2012 with or without a financial sponsor – on the 11^th December is our team meeting where we will be discussing budgets for 2012 … so stay tuned.

We're almost there ... only 6 weeks left of this year

Well here we are – mid of November and quite a few things have been happening.

THE TOURNAMENT – WINTER SERIES

First off we have been participating in the RaceTo2 Division of the Bricketwood Winter Series (Round 2), which was a huge experience and learning curve for the team looking at 2012. We arrived as usual at 7:30/8:00 a.m. to walk the fields and have a look at the lay out. After the team captain meeting we received our schedule and realized that we actually would be playing teams that normally play 2-3 Divisions over us, so we thought to ourselves let’s see how this goes.

It will not come as a surprise that we didn’t place high in this tournament (7^th of 8 teams), but we gave them a run for their money and pinched one point off of 2 teams we played in the preliminary rounds (which play Division 1 and Semi Professional) and lost the last of the 3 matches 2:0. The last game of the day, after the group stage, was against our sister team Samurai Rage, which we decided for us in a 2:0 win. So maybe not great on paper – but the team now has a lot better picture of what a “RaceTo2”tournament will look like next year and not to forget, this was against veteran teams that have been playing this format for ages.

THE “NEW COACH” FOR SAMURAI MV

The next highlight for us was that we found a new “coach”who will help out training “Samurai MV” in the off season and support us throughout the 2012 season. He has been in domestic and international tournaments for quite a while and is an absolute asset to have around for knowledge and training schedules and support – we might even get him on the field next year … but time will tell. I’ll go into this more in early December once we had our first training with him (27^thNovember 2011). Darren, the “Samurai Paintball” coach, I think is a bit relieved that we have someone now, since he has been a busy man over the last months trying to support almost 40 people split in 4-5 teams … it’s just not possible and I think this will be a huge support for him. Again here –thanks Darren for all you have done for us up to here – every trophy we bring home is for you. =)

THE SPONSORSHIP

Last but not least – we have finally finished our sponsorship proposal and got it signed off by our current supporters/sponsors. We have sent this out toa dozen of companies yesterday and now are

keeping our fingers crossed to hear back from them soon. The final deadline for them is the 15^th January 2012, since we need to then start ordering our gear and jerseys.

SUMMARY

So it is all taking shape now – our new logo is almost final, new coach and support is found, new players have been drafted in the team over the last weeks and we have sent out our sponsorship proposal - all this and more will be revealed to you here in the next few weeks in every dirty little detail ... so stay posted and tuned … 2012 is only 6 weeks away!!!

Last Pro-Clinic Training for 2011 – with Jason Wheeler (from London Nexus)

Thanks to the great relationship of the teams training at Bricketwood Paintball and our fantastic owner/coach Darren we got Jason Wheeler from London Nexus to close the season with a last Pro-Clinic in 2011 on the 6^th November. It was a great opportunity to get the heads ready for Samurai MV looking at next season – but just as useful for all our sister teams that were attending this training.

It was a great day with an early start – warm-up, drills and 3vs.3 games before lunch. Following lunch we continued with some RaceTo2 format games back to back, to put into action what we had learned that day - until we all ran out of paint. After this really good but exhausting session, Jason actually took another 30-45 minutes speaking about “5-man” tournament style paintball vs. “X-Ball/Race To” tournament style paintball. It was an absolute privilege listening from one of the best players in the UK about what Nexus do to prepare for a new field layout before a tournament:

• What time/action go into preparation
• Detailed list of process on and off the field – tricks and tips on what to look out for
• What sideline coaches should and shouldn’t do

I think the entire group of teams that Samurai Paintball had down that weekend were well impressed and have a much better grasp on what is on the plan for 2012 – and especially us from MV know it will be quite a stretch to keep up … but I think it will be just as much fun. As Jason said “The good thing about this sport, like many other sports is – you get out of it, what you put into it” – and I think we will be putting in loads.

Since I don’t want to blur this post with our last training with other admin things that are currently happening – I’ll leave it as this for now and give you all an update later this week.

Jason – Thanks again for your help and time and good luck for your plans in 2012! =)