BAD BOYS

You’re cruising the web and stumble across a photo of a pro paintballer flipping off the opposition.

Paging through a magazine, you find paintball ads with female models just a couple of stitches shy of Playboy centerfold candidacy.

In a televised NPPL event, someone gets marked early in the game and throws his marker.

Hotels suffer from pro paintballers trashing their rooms.

Players at your local field use incessant obscenities every time they open their mouths.

Just down the street from you, a sign becomes the target of paintball vandalism.

Yes, it’s small wonder that the sport has been receiving so much bad publicity. And half of the reason is the huge mistake many paintballers make in assuming paintball is a bad boy’s sport.

It isn’t.

Paintball is a game that should be played no less respectably than any other. It should be a game of rules, with codes of conduct being paramount. And it should be acceptable to anyone.

Thanks to irresponsible players who don’t care about the images they project, paintball is getting a bad rap. Thanks to the manufacturers who encourage the bad boy image with their ads, players in turn have encouraged the public to move against paintball. Thanks to the pros who don’t keep their gestures and mouths in line, many people assume all players are rude and indecent.

If this keeps up, people could keep turning sour on paintball until one day the sport is forced to die.

But there’s still hope!

We can do our part by eliminating the bad boy motif from the sport. Have meaningful conversations with other players on the subjects of conduct and good sportsmanship. Set a good example, on and off the field. Make it known that you are a paintballer, and let others see, through your actions, that you’re a respectable, decent person. If vandalism with paintballs takes place in your town, write a letter to the editor of your local paper, stating that you, as a paintballer, do not condone that crime. Introduce new players to the sport, and make sure they have a good, clean experience.

Paintball has grown, but it’s still relatively young. A lot of people have only heard a little about it, while others haven’t even heard anything at all. When such folks hear their first sizeable amount of information about paintball, let’s do all we can to make sure it’s positive stuff. If what they hear is bad, it’ll take a long time to turn their opinion around.

Paintball has been allowed to go too far in a bad direction. If enough of us band together to push back, we may be able to bring paintball to the perfect position — where good conduct is universally considered just as important as the paint.