Paintball & safety - an observation from a recent experience

[ChuckLove]

Welp, my yearly Florida trip is coming to an end, and for the second consecutive year, I was able to hit the field for a day of walk-on play in South Florida. I'm not going to name names for anonymity sake, but it was in the greater Ft. Lauderdale/Miami area.

Had a ton of fun (as always), but I was absolutely shocked at 1) the number of egregious mask and barrel cover violations and 2) the utter lack of safety protocols/procedures, otherwise.

Some examples:
- No barrel covers at all
- Barrel swabs being used as barrel covers (like shoved down the barrel into the breach???)
- Players walking through the netting onto the field without a mask on
- Players lifting masks mid-game w/o ref interference
- Refs walking around during a live game w/o masks on
- Refs lifting their masks to tell players to put their mask down mid-game
- No chronograph...
- Players blaring music from bluetooth speakers attached to their person on the field (not really a safety thing, well, kinda. but def weird).

Now, maybe I'm just a spoiled New Englander with tons of great options and this is a one-off situation, or just a bad day. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. However, this field appeared to be the premier spot for two fairly large metro markets in an area I assumed paintball was pretty well spread.

I don't know...at the risk of sounding rude, the whole experience just felt kinda 'third world-y'.

Anyone else experience something like this? Am I overthinking things?

FWIW, I still had a great day.

Did you shoot anything brass while down there? I want to know the reactions you got from the players down there?

[packersrule729]

Ha, no. Had to pack lightly. They were shocked enough to see a cocker pump. I can’t imagine what a brass lever pirate would’ve done.

[ChuckLove]

packersrule729 They probably would have took them as props from Pirates of the Caribbean.

[Jonnydread]

I think you hit the nail on the head about being a spoiled New Englander. The majority of the fields that we frequent up here have a strong focus on safety and low tolerance for rule breaking, so that's become our expectation as a standard for when we travel. Even the fields around here that don't have as strong as a safety focus wouldn't put up with most of the shit you listed.

I have found one local field that is quite popular for the speedball/tournament crowd that had some egregious safety violations. The aforementioned field can do no wrong in the eyes of the regulars, so after one conversation with the owner I decided it wasn't worth my time, but I don't plan on giving them business and I certainly won't send anyone their way.

What was the makeup of players like, mostly rentals or walk-ons or what? I think the reason a lot of the fields up here are so strict with their safety protocols is because they tend to cater to rentals and birthday parties and such, and as those tend to deal with younger players it behooves them to be super on top of the rules. That being said, I don't know how much Timmy's Mom knows about paintball safety, so it's possible some fields get away with shitty safety due to a lack of customer awareness.

At the risk of being inflammatory the Bluetooth speaker thing seems to be something that certain cultures and sub-cultures find more acceptable than others. I ran into someone with a speaker once at a field and I found it so goddamned annoying. I don't mind music in the dead zone or staging area or whatever, but hearing is a big part of paintball strategy and I'm not paying to listen to your shitty music. Luckily in my situation the guy was in a private group so I didn't have to deal with it on the field, but it drove me absolutely insane, probably unreasonably so.

I have seen barrel swabs being used as barrel covers before, but as a paintball can dislodge the swab and whack someone in the eye it is not appropriate at all. There's a reason we don't use barrel plugs anymore.

The no-mask thing is bonkers, especially at a pay-to-play. With our core outlaw group we will sometimes take our masks off to breathe in-between games, but only after everyone is gathered together and it's been confirmed that everyone has their barrel bags on. If I saw a ref lift their mask in game I would make a friggin' scene to the owner.

No chrono is insane as well. That's one of the most basic things a field needs to be a real field in my mind. If my outlaw group has more stringent safety measures and equipment than your insured field, something is very wrong.

So in short, you are not overthinking things, those are egregious safety concerns. My guess is that enough of the player base is apathetic and the owner is lazy so why spend time & money on something that is of no benefit. Unfortunately all it takes is one lawsuit and bye-bye field.

[glaman5266]

packersrule729 Yes, you absolutely can hold it against those players. Especially when 95% are self-equipped.

This whole thread makes my brain hurt.

[Jonnydread]

I think there's the rub. If the majority of their customer base are self-equipped and they're happy doing their thing there's no financial incentive for the owner to do anything differently.

[MrBarraclough]

packersrule729 "Florida gonna Florida. Can’t hold it against them"

Yes, you absolutely can hold it against them, and should. I live adjacent to the Florida panhandle and we get plenty of people from there at my home field in south Alabama. We don't put up with that kind of nonsense, and to their credit, our Florida players don't act like that or expect to be allowed to act like that. Hell, my first playing experience was at a field in Florida, right next to NAS Pensacola. Everywhere I have played, there has always been a clearly marked point beyond which you put your mask on and you keep it on your face until you come back past that point; no excuses. And people who have to be told more than once by the staff are then told to GTFO.

This was 100% local field culture gone bad.

[JeeperCreeper]

Sounds like Florida to me.

Meanwhile in Mass, I played a great game at APE. We had maybe 20 people total on Sunday, and most of them were renter kids. All of us experienced players instantly broke out Spyders, pumps, and I even played a few games with only my single shot PGP and a borrowed double barrel Umarex to keep the games chill. Everyone was great. One guy let a kid borrow his fully upped CS2 when his Spyder blew an oring. Such a great day of paintball.

[Jordan]

I'm constantly harping on people to keep their masks on, regardless of what field I seem to play on.

Last guy responded "I play here all the time, I'm not worried". I said "I use an air chisel at work all the time, I still wear safety glasses".

[MrBarraclough]

My go-to response for any such bullshit excuse is: "The paintballs don't care. They'll destroy your eyeballs just the same no matter who you are or what you are doing."

[Trbo323]

I'm not going to name names for anonymity sake, but it was in the greater Ft. Lauderdale/Miami area.

Screw that, call them out. Not like they have any reason to change if you are going to cover up their bad behavior.

I can understand leaving it anonymous if you are talking about something that was an honest mistake but this is clearly a pattern of behavior not an isolated incident.

Sent from my motorola edge 5G UW (2021) using Tapatalk

[packersrule729]

Yeah, but I’d still rather not, given this post is public.

Maybe they run private games differently.

Anyway, if you’re traveling to South FL and planning to play, PM me and I’ll give you the name. Otherwise, some basic Googling should prob show you the culprit

[The Inflicted]

- Barrel swabs being used as barrel covers (like shoved down the barrel into the breach???)

Is there anything particularly wrong with this? I would think that the inertia here would make it safer than the average barrel plug, and more visible to the ref.

[packersrule729]

Fundamentally, yes. But I had thought plugs or barrel blockers in general had gone the way of the dodo.

Barrel covers/condoms/sleeves seem to be the safest, most effective method of contraception.

[Euphie]

It depends on the squeegee many will shoot out with some force on a single shot, yet the Smart Parts gadget grip barrel plug can take quite a few hits and go nowhere. It mag be better than the old plastic barrel plugs with pressure relief holes in them though.

[Jordan]

Is there anything particularly wrong with this? I would think that the inertia here would make it safer than the average barrel plug, and more visible to the ref.

Other than turning your marker into a speargun, no... 🙂

[MrBarraclough]

This thread brings up something I would like to make absolutely clear: Climate is no excuse for lax mask safety.

I live and play on the Gulf Coast. My home field is Southern Alabama Paintball, just south of Mobile. It sits in the floodplain of the Fowl River, within a couple of miles of Mobile Bay to the east, and a few miles north of the Gulf of Mexico. One section of our field literally is a swamp. It gets hot and humid here. Really, really, goddamned hot and humid. Daytime highs are above 80F for about half the year, and throughout the summer above 90F. Humidity at or near 100% is typical. And it rains. A lot. Mobile is the rainiest city in the contiguous 48 states. Afternoon thunder showers are like clockwork from late July until about Labor Day. Our field is open rain or shine. So yeah, mask fogging is a bit of an issue. I always bring at least two masks and alternate after each game, to give the foam a chance to dry out and avoid getting saturated. I also bring a little folding battery powered fan that sits on the table behind my mask and blows on the foam. These strategies help, but on rainy days there will be fogging no matter what you do. And even without fogging, on really hot days a mask can feel suffocating.

We are as fierce and strict about masks here as anyone can be. You enter the net, your mask must be on, and stay that way until you're clear of the net coming off. First time a ref sees a mask out of place, you sit out a game. Second time, you leave for the day. They mean it. I have seen them bounce players. If a mask fogs up so bad someone really cannot see, they'll be assisted off the field so they don't walk into the pond. Mask removal is never an option. Fogging sucks, and having to deal with it is frustrating, but that's no excuse for unsafe behavior. Because paintballs don't care how hot and humid it is; they will destroy eyeballs all the same.

So anyone whining about being hot or uncomfortable or having fogging as an excuse for taking a mask off or lifting it up on their head just needs to suck it up and deal with it. We keep our masks on here in the nutsack of America, so everyone else can too.

[Jonnydread]

As a happy mention:

I played at the local indoor field yesterday with the aggies since no one wanted to play outlaw. This field is not my favorite field and I have had some mixed experiences in the past. Simply, they upped their game. I was seeing random FPS checks, very active refs, games started/stopped with a whistle and other positive things to note. They don't have a separate chrono station (just a handheld that the ref uses on the field) and when I walked onto the field to test my velocity the ref had his mask up while he was cleaning the bunkers and there were two players with their masks up talking about bunker placement, strategy, etc. The ref stopped me at the dead box as soon as he saw me coming, put his mask down and told the other two players to put their masks down or get off the field. We were with a group of experienced players so I wasn't too concerned, but the attitude and immediate hop-to-it nature of the ref really put a positive check mark in my book for this field. Very glad to see the improvement and I'm far more likely to come back now that I've seen some positives.

[The Inflicted]

Other than turning your marker into a speargun, no... 🙂

That's not how that works, at least, not with today's squeegees and swabs.
Try it and get back to me.

[Jordan]

That's not how that works, at least, not with today's squeegees and swabs.
Try it and get back to me.

This is coming across as a bit confrontational - if I caught you in an off mood, my apologies, but I don't think there is any substitute for safety. The industry has settled on barrel bags for a reason.