In addition to the typical sports of basketball, football and others, UT is home to a team representing a unique and unusual athletic endeavor: Paintball, a sport not found at every SEC school.
UT’s paintball club, which was started in 2005, encompasses a team of 13 players who play the game as a competitive sport. The team travels around the south each year attending tournaments with other teams from all over the southeast and even won the National Championship in 2011. They recently competed in a competition in Huntsville for the Alabama XBall League, in which they secured fourth place.
“We have the funnest time,” Tory Ramsey, vice president of the club and senior in advertising, said of the team’s tournaments. “Crazy stuff happens whenever we go on trips.”
“XBall” is the name for collegiate level paintball. XBall involves 20-minute games between two teams, who start each match behind inflatable bunkers. In order to score points, a player must run onto the opposing team’s side of the field and press a buzzer. At the end of the 20 minutes, whichever team has scored the most points wins.
Another version of the paintball game, called “Race to 2,” involves three timed matches played between two opposing teams. Points are once again given by pressing the opposing team’s buzzer, and the first team to win two out of the three matches wins the overall game.
Despite the uniqueness of the game and the team’s competitive success, the paintball club has recently struggled to maintain its place here at UT.
In its peak, the team had over 20 players for a game which requires only around eight. However, in recent years, interest has dropped and the team no longer holds tryouts in order to maintain their numbers. And it’s not just UT paintball that is suffering; the game’s popularity is slowing fizzling out on college campuses across the south as teams opt to participate in regional leagues rather than the collegiate league.
“We’re not really sure why it’s kind of starting to die out ’cause there are just not as many events being planned, and some schools don’t have teams anymore,” Julian New, president of the Paintball club and senior in psychology, said. “And I think it’s just that a lot of people would rather just play the local events. It’s just easier to drive two hours instead of five and then meet up once a year to play the national tournament.”
Additionally, paintball is, as Ramsey explained, a very expensive sport — more expensive than most. The cost of gear, competitions and paint quickly adds up.
“I don’t know how I afford it myself. I just somehow make it work, picking up extra shifts at work here and there,” Ramsey said.
Ramsey added up the costs of everything, including gear, which can be an investment of between $600 to $700, paint that costs $45 per practice and competitions that are $150 to $250 each.
New hoped that paintball, a sport he’s played since he was 11, will be able to maintain its place here on campus even though it almost disappeared a couple years ago.
The team has also been an important part of Ramsey’s life for the grand majority of his collegiate career.
“Second semester (of my freshman year) I ended up joining. I ended up really enjoying it,” Ramsey said. “I liked it so much I took over the vice president’s spot my junior year.”
The Paintball club is a standout aspect of UT athleticism and its disappearance would signify not only the loss of a unique portion of campus but also a loss of champions.
“It’s a big adrenaline rush,” New said. “There’s nothing really like it, where you’re shooting paintball guns at each other. It’s hard to describe.”
