3 Proper Steps to Accurately Communicating on the Paintball Field cont...

Proper Steps to Accurately Communicating

Step #1

Make sure everyone on the team knows all of the team’s unique codes for kill counts, teammate losses, and time left in the game, bunkers, equipment failure, bunkering, game plans/breakout plans, etc. Practice making these calls over and over and make sure everyone is on the same page for this important information. Make these codes unique to just your teammates and not copied from other teams. Remember, the best way to do this is keep it short and simple and not more difficult then the codes need to be. There is so much usually happening in a real game of paintball that the last thing you want to do is have to worry about what a code for a certain part of the game is while actually playing a tournament situation. If you really want to take it to the next level you can learn hand signals that distinguish or portray what you want to happen on the field from your teammates. For example: doing a simple hand wave to represent you want yourself or another a player to go to the snake or you think an opponent is about to go to a key spot on the field before the game starts!

Step#2

Always remember, when a game starts and players arrive at their position on the field, to quickly communicate where the opponent is, the kill count if you have eliminated an opponent, an opponent in your mirror, or a teammate loss. This should be the first thing you do along with shooting your gun and looking for moves. This is very important because it could drastically change the outcome of the game very quickly, depending on which side the information favors. If you can affectively do this in the beginning of a game across your team, you might be able to act quickly depending on whether you shot an opposing player and can quickly make a move down the field. On the opposite side of this scenario, your team might lose one or two players at the start of the game and need to communicate that information to your teammates and act accordingly to the situation. You may have lost your whole left side and need to swing over to spread the field. When doing this don’t just start yelling to yell, you have to make sure your information gets to the rest of your team as I stated before. So many players just yell what they see once and think they did their job, but don’t actually get it across to others. Because the first 30 seconds of a game is the most important, it is vital to absorb everything that is happening on the field and getting it across to your teammates instantly.

Step#3

Another important communication note to practice, is too always quickly communicate any information to your teammates if the opponent has made a move to a “killer spot” on the field. This “killer spot” is a spot where you know is a very effective position on the field to eliminate players. Most of the time when you see an opponent move into this “killer spot” the opponent might not be able to kill you from there, but you know that if you teammate across the field does not receive the information, he will be eliminated. These “killer spots” usually include far positions up the snake, or Dorito side of the field and even the center X. This is why it is so important that you immediately get this information across to your teammate that could be affected by the opponent’s move, before he is eliminated and you are down another body that could have been avoided!


Gant MacLellan