Live Coverage

2004 CFOA Season Opener

text and photographs by Joshua D. Silverman

The Carolina Field Owners Association began their 2004 season with 116 teams in rookie, novice and amateur divisions competing for tens of thousands of dollars in cash and prizes February 28 and 29 at New Gen Paintball of Easley, South Carolina. After several days of relatively warm weather in the weeks leading into the event, Mother Nature turned vindictive and dumped the worst snow storm in 102 years on the Charlotte area, depositing a foot or more of snow on the Lexington region and several inches throughout North Carolina and even into areas of South Carolina. As luck would have it, Easley, South Carolina, the host site of the event, received less than an inch of snow, then warm weather immediately following it that melted the snow and left the fields slightly soggy, but playable. Teams began arriving throughout the day Friday as the staff of NewGen Paintball and the CFOA worked throughout the afternoon and into the evening to erect four fields for the event. By late Friday night, the staging areas, indoor vendor area and the four fields to be used in the weekend's competition were prepared and the largest paintball tournament in Mid-Atlantic history was ready to kick off.

Saturday dawned sunny and cold in Easley, South Carolina as 65 rookie five-man teams converged to compete in the Mantis Rookie Division of the Carolina Field Owners Association, presented by National Paintball Supply. Air, provided by Rob Staudinger and the staff of Paintball Central, delivered a consistent 4,500psi via push-button Kalibur fill stations to the hundreds of air-hungry players, most of whom were shooting Intimidators, Shockers, Matrices and even several DM4's, an impressive spread of firepower for a rookie division anywhere. After an early referee meeting and captains' meeting, games began on all fields by approximately 8am. With five-minute time limits and fields designed to both encourage and award aggressive play, games moved at a steady pace through the preliminary rounds, also helped along by such new innovations as dedicated referee jerseys provided by Reactive and covered scorer's tables at every field staffed by CFOA employees who handled all aspects of scoring including the handing out of the new CFOA pre-printed score sheets, provided in triplicate to the score table, the winners and the losers.

By mid-afternoon the preliminaries were completed, scores were tallied and the sixteen teams taken through to the semifinals were back on the fields. As the sun began to sink towards the trees the final four stepped onto the fields to decide the event. Defy, Panic and Last Call brought up fourth, third and second respectively, and Diffusion took the inaugural event of the 2004 CFOA rookie season. After a brief ceremony inside the indoor area that also housed the vendors, who included National Paintball Supply, Brimstone, Paintball Central, Barrel Buffers, Reactive, Paintball Kingdom and a large food stand, the players and the referees called it a day and prepared for Sunday's novice and amateur event

 
SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY!

Sunday morning, like Saturday morning, dawned cold for the novice and amateur teams, fifty total, which came to compete in their portions of the massive 2004 CFOA season-opener at New Gen Paintball. However, as the games began, the weather quickly began to warm and eventually ended up in the sixties with a beautiful sun in the southern skies, making for a wonderful day of paintball. The novice and amateur teams would, in keeping with top-level competition, play a mixed preliminary round then move into novice and amateur semifinals and finals. Top teams from years past, including XSF, Runnin' Wild, Carolina Ruckus, Infinity, Virus and Mantis were joined in the amateur division by top novices from the previous season, including Overload, Virus X and season champions Thrash Black. Coming off a strong rookie season in 2003, team Machine fielded a team in the amateur bracket at the opener, augmented by "Super Dave" May, and Tyler Humphries, who joined the fun for a day of play from his spot on NXL franchise team Trauma. Whiplash re-entered the amateur fray helped out by fellow Trauma member David "Little Woo" Wooten, who cut his teeth in the CFOA as a founding member of First Strike.

As the games ran their course, it became clear that the novices and rookies who made the jump to the amateur bracket were every bit as strong, if not a bit stronger, than the longtime amateurs returning for another season. Thrash Black, Machine, Virus X and Overload all made the semifinal cut and were front runners throughout the day heading into the finals. Mantis split their PSP ten-man squad into two teams, one amateur and one novice, both of whom played well. It was clear that Factory Mantis, the novice of the two, were bound to be a "tough crowd." The amateur version was joined by long-time player and industry member Jason Stone, who greatly solidified their back line and should be a great help to them going into the PSP Pomona event.

In the novice bracket, CCX, from Richmond, Virginia came into the division strong and led the way throughout the preliminary round, the semifinals and even the finals, and finished the day with a win, their second in as many years. Inviscid, a strong rookie team in 2003, made the move up to the novice division and made their first event as a novice team their first trip to Sunday's final round. Fracture, playing out of Ellis Lay's Adventure Beach Paintball, also made the novice finals along with Factory Mantis, who finished second.
The amateur finals were populated solely by teams who played novice and rookie in their previous year, save Mantis Factory, who held the amateur banner high. They were joined in the amateur finals by Thrash Black, Overload and 2003 rookie sensation, Machine. Overload, who had literally machine-gunned teams off the field all day, were stopped only by Thrash Black in the finals, but still managed to win their first event as am amateur team. Thrash Black, in their first event as an amateur team, took second place, ahead of Mantis Factory and Machine, who rounded out the top four in that order.

Prizes for the event were opulent indeed, as the long list of CFOA sponsors provided such product as Inferno paintballs from National Paintball Supply, Dye barrels, goggles, jerseys and other gear, Powerlyte barrels and drops, Der Der Productions DVD's, gift certificates from XSF, Paintball Central, Paintball Kingdom and Kalibur, Draxxus tournament pants, entries into the Ultimate Madness, Warp Feeds from Airgun Designs, trophies for all places from Morgan Awards and of course, over two thousand dollars in cash money from the CFOA, that was awarded to the amateur finishers. With PB2X, WARPIG DerDer and onlypaintball.com and flagpull.com on-hand to cover the event and even local television news cameras and newspaper photographers in attendance, the event received massive press and the players in one of the largest tournament series in the world are finally beginning to receive from the industry the recognition and support they have for so long deserved. The next stop on the CFOA 2004 tour will bring the league to Atlanta, Georgia in their first event in that state. PB2X will feature all the coverage from the scene, as will the rest of the CFOA's media sponsors.