History

Here is a short introduction on my experience with paintball.

In 1992, I first heard about this sport thanks to a friend who had already played paintball and who started explaining her own experience. I understood immediately which activity she was talking about. My only problem was that I did not know the word "paintball", as it may be the case for some of you too.

I was immediately fascinated and asked her a lot of questions. I realized very quickly that there was only one way to really understand what she had lived and felt: try paintball by myself. So I looked for people who would like to join me for a paintball game.

I quickly got 14 people together. The field was located in Neerroeteren. There, I met the manager, Guy, who became one of my best friends.

At the beginning of the first game, I felt an adrenaline rush and my heart began beating very fast. I will never forget that day.

Two weeks later, I was back with around thirty people who all wanted to play paintball. At that time, I ordered my own marker.
From that day on, I went everywhere with Guy in order to play. One year later, I was a member of a paintball club in Antwerp, under the name of "Armageddon".

With that club, I took part in many competitions, even abroad. Hence, I gained more and more experience in that sport.

After two years, I decided to make my own team. It was not easy to gather the adequate persons, but when the team was finally set up, we called it "The Snipers". One of the members, Ibo, is my present partner.

So there I was, with an inexperienced team at paintball and that ignored everything about tournaments. In front of us, there were 66 other teams with several year-long experience. I gave my team a two-month training and enrolled them at the Belgian Federation.

The first tournament we took part in was a huge achievement. We ended in third place. I was in heaven. That year, we won 8 trophies and ended up second in the Belgian Championship.

In order to share with other people that fantastic feeling provoked by paintball, we decided to create in 2000 "Paintball Arena".

Paintball? Try it before talking about it!