Charleroi Blog


Division 2 - 7 man Format - 2007
Points: 197 - Position: 1st

This blog tells the story of when the Notorious Kidz won their first millennium 7-man event. Quite an experience believe me and real good to feel like a true spartan for a day. Unfortunately we were so wrapped up in playing this event that we failed to produce any photos.

Day 1


So once again I found myself in the car with Coldy heading south towards Dave's at the end of a hard days work in the real world. We would be staying the night there and waking up at 5am to begin the great adventure in the (now sponsored to us) Silver VW Notouribus. We had trained hard. I knew before we had even left my house that my job was a hard one this month. The most complicating dance i've ever had to train for. But at the same time... I knew that we were gonna do good. Coldy told me that he had had a dream that we won Belgium, so that meant that we would actually win it... We did deserve it, but only time would tell. We got to Dave's where we met Franky, Ben and Conner. Vlad would be picked up shortly after, and we were going to get The Spaniard, The Earl of Angus and Tony in europe. We wouldn't sleep that night. There was no point.


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Day 2


5am came and we were still rocking out at Dave's (in many cases with body parts swinging in the wind, in true NK style). We had passed the time eating chicken and oranges whilst playing xbox or hearing stories from the days of the Dynasty and the D7's tournaments, raving and of course.... seeing if bum hair moves if you fart with no boxers on. Dave had had his sleep (evading all of this) and would come over to get us all. We quickly faked being a sleep so he arrived to a quiet out house. Then of course the giggle set it off and before you know it we're all loading up the van, and setting off towards Dover, crossing the pond and touring our way through europe. We finally arrived at our destination, and i was shocked. This sort of apartment wouldn't survive 10 minutes in England. 6 bedroom flat with living and dining areas, fully kitted out. All kitchen units and bathroom with all the gear you'll ever need. We had our own driveway and bbq area, complete with patio and a store room. It was ridiculous. After a quick rave we dropped our stuff off, met up with Tony and went to see the event site. It wasn't finished but we managed to find time to walk a few fields, get banned from the CPL field, grab some swimming shorts from Dye (cheers boys and girls) and stop for another rave. We returned to the challet and got them shorts on, ran up to the pool already naked and got straight in. they had diving boards, flumes and rapids. We made it fun :)


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Day 3


We had collected the rest of the team by now and were ready to go to the site to get signed in and get our player passes. We met up with Team Angry Fish and Team Xtreme (spain) who were staying in our complex so we had organized a massacre in the flume later on. We were having so much fun that the thought of paintball hadn't even got to us yet. But we were always ready for it. As promised we all met up at the pool and yes it was a massacre. 18 people in one chain on a flume. wrestling your way back up the flumes, climbing onto the roofs to let people fly by and accidently wiping out the locals when they were innocently passing by... Great fun. I think that everyone went home injured that evening. Cuts, slices, bruises, sprained bodyparts and all sorts. Great fun.


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Day 4


We are ready for action.... or are we. We Went there early to watch a few games before we were on, but eventually our time came and we were packing bags of confidence. Game 1... We lost... oh my god!!! what's up with that? I don't know what was up with us but we weren't performing. There were mistakes happening everywhere. On the first day we had Won 2 games in total. Out of 4. We could still do it but we weren't looking our usual selves. Tempers were rising and sensitive players began to show their real colours. That night we all got together and beat each other up, re worked the plan and team formation, We weren't right, so we just rested up and got ready for action.


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Day 5


We had rested. We had also woken up and left the challet at 6am to avoid the bike race traffic that was meant to be passing us by. We were on at 9am and we were all looking down. All bar Coldy who was certain that his dream wouldn't fail him. We won our first game... but it was close. Then we had lost the second. We were making it ever harder for ourselves, but somewhere between that loss and next game (where Dave walked into the huddle, put his hand in and said.... no big man chants, you know what you have to do, calm yourselves and play clever), something seemed to have changed. I had sat 3 games in total over the event. I had spent my time watching the boys play (which i had never done before) and i had also felt a big pressure lifted. I had chilled out completely. Its hard to explain but i guess it was all psychological. My first 2 games i was at the start gate. I knew where i had to go. I knew what i had to do. But there was always a cloud above me saying that i must do this... and i must do that to timed perfection. This is why i always referred to it as a dance. I Knew that i must start my break low and get away from coldy's lane on the break (to allow him to see the field and not shoot me at the same time) i knew i needed to make it to my primary, alive, and be ready to shoot my opposite (forcing him to go low) which would allow me a free fast crawl pass to my secondary bunker. From there i knew to wait for coldy to bump up and wait for him to open up a path for me to fast crawl to my third bunker. And i knew that from there i was to pick on or push out one target before moving up and doing the same to 3 targets from the fourth bunker. All to be done very precisely and quickly. This was all on my shoulder whilst i waited at the gate for the 10 second call. It seemed like the hardest thing to do until i sat out and watched it get done. I had stood next to Dave and realised that I would never even need to think about any of that stuff. I know how to battle. I know how to shoot people and i've been on this field long enough for all of those things to be second nature. And so after that plain and simple, low effort and low energy 3,2,1 Team chant at the start of the 3rd game, everything seemed to have chilled out. My head wasn't buzzing with complicating moves that needed to be performed to perfection. Everything seemed chilled. I knew what to do and didn't have to think about it. The cloud had seemed to have disappeared. I guess it was like i had bigged the field up so much that i had overcomplicated it for myself. But now i had realized that and it wasn't such a big deal anymore. It was suddenly just a game of paintball, and i was playing snake side. Easy...

And so they called 10 seconds..... and they called game on. And i played my game. And the team played theirs. and together we had won a stunning game. I even got praise for my game play.. which was a first. Then the next game was the same. It was never easy... but it was never hard. Something had clicked for the team... but there was a chance that it was too late. We needed to be in the top 12 to make it to sunday and we were relying on 5 wins out of 8 games. We needed some luck.

We watched a few CPL games cheering with Team Angry Fish under the shadow of the enormous Nexus banner while we waited for the scores to come in. We ate loads and we drank many frozen slush drinks which became the only thing we wanted to drink. Eventually the scores came in, and we were in 8th place in the prelims. We were through but we weren't convinced with our results. We train hard... we should be nothing short of 1st place in the prelims.


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Day 6


So we were awake and ready for the sunday league. 12 teams in 3 groups of 4 teams. The 3 group winners and the next highest scorer would go on to play the semi finals. We were calm, and to me, it seemed like everyone was feeling the same as me. It was like there was no pressure. This was easy. It was what we do. We played our first game. We knew it was important to keep high body counts and preferably win them all. We lost the game to Razorback (france), but nobody seemed bothered. We all had paint issues but we seemed to be playing well... so we simply changed the paint. We were still going to have it. It was like we just wanted to add a little bit of pressure to the game, because the pressure had seemed to have cooled off. It was stupid....

The next game we came out again. Relaxed chant. Low adrenaline. Low pressure but a halo of confidence was always present. We had lost to the Veterans before.... but not this game. NK unleashed some serious moves and we would win that game with 5 alive. Good win. Good body count. Next we would play again... and again we would win.

But had we won the group..... Who knew. We knew that razorback would play the veterans and we wanted the veterans to win and knock razorbacks scores down as they hadn't lost a game yet. But we needed them to do it with a good body count. The veterans took the game and we cheered in celebration... but we didn't know if we had actually made it. We went to the score board and waited. We had not won the group but our score had made us that 4th place by, with the next highest score.... we had once again got really lucky.

We had a break, and we regrouped. We had got lucky but we were playing for at least 4th place now, so we had something to prove. We came all the way out to belgium... we had trained for months... we deserved a good position.

We got drawn up against UK Outrage. We had never lost a game against them in the past. We are two different styles of team, and ours just always seems to break their defenses. We had done it before.... and we would do it again....2 games in a row in a best of 3 games match up. We are looking hot..... and we are now playing for first and second. We had been given 5 minutes to walk the SPL fields. We had help from a few pros and got our plans fine tuned. That halo of confidence still seemed to cover us. We were meant to be here... We played our first game and with a few 1 for 1's we had lost a whole side and allowed the other team to shoot us up. But we were not broken, we seemed to enjoy the pressure. We were still on fire. And the next game we would come back! And we would put it on them. We showed them what being an Nk soldier was all about. All the while there seemed to be no pressure. I had destroyed my hopper by now... but i didn't care. We could take this team with a hand full of balls and a barrel each. We came out for the 3rd game and remained calm. The whistle sounded and we came down on the team like a tone of bricks. We wiped them clean off the field and stood on the field waiting for the marshals to check us over. Coldy had an invisible splat on him somewhere so he was out and I was forced to walk on his 1 for 1.... but we still had bodys on the field. I knew we had won but my emotions seemed to be locked as i walked off towards the dead box. Then the marshall shouted.... 'game over!!' and on that note i had thrown my gun to the ground, and my walk had progressed to a run. i leaped onto the nearest player i could find and screamed in celebration along with the other lads and the crowd. We all unleashed what was storing up in ourselves over those previous games. We had just won our first Millennium event.

The strangest thing was that for the first time ever i had something to bring home. I've been back only two days but it still feels weird. I brought that strange calmness home with me. Sometimes it doesn't even feel like we had just played an amazingly close tournament and won it. Normally i return home and have to come back to a reality where nobody knows who you are or what you'd just accomplished and nobody cares where you were last weekend or what sport you dedicate yourself to play. For the first time ever... i returned home... and i didn't care...

I've done something amazing with my new brothers, and maybe you'll never understand what it is that we do, or why we do it. But i know that you'll never see trust like i've seen trust. You've never seen love like i've seen love and you've never seen pain like i've seen pain... We will continue to train for this. And we will be at paris next month....

Nev x


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Images

Unfortunately we were so wrapped up in playing this event that we failed to produce any photos.



Lesson:


An Achievement is an Achievement


Don't let other people (who weren't there) judge you for what you do. If you come home from a paintball tournament after coming first. You rock! and you earned it. Dont let people say... 'so you shot a few army wannabees and won a little trophy'.