Tombstone Paintball, in Corona, California, was host to it's first pump gun tournament on June 11, 1999.  The tournament was open to all classes of players, and had a number of sponsors, which included WGP, Unique Sporting Goods, Check-it Products, I&I Sports, The MPN.com, and Tombstone paintball.  The tournament was reffed by Team Tombstone, as well as a handful of other players, who all did an excellent job.  Though there only ended up being around seven teams total for the tourney, it went fairly well, and was definitely, different from your average tourney.

        Two fields were used for the tournament, which included Tombstone's main Speed ball field, which consisted of "x" spindles with cut out trash cans on top, and a new field called "Civil War" which mainly consisted of old logs, stacked strategically for tournament play.  The format of the tourney was a "round robin" format; basically with everyone playing each other twice.  The top 3 teams progressed onto semis, then finals.  Though there were only seven teams, the tourney was definitely destined to a full day of tournament play.

        There were a handful of well known teams on hand, which included Team of Honor, Yella, and a throw together team, which mainly consisted of players from Team Voodoo and a few old pros.  There were a few other teams which consisted of much younger players, as well as a few teams which were playing their first tournament.  Though the tourney consisted of teams, with skill levels ranging from beginner to amateur (and almost pro, in my opinion), the tournament went fairly well, with most of the beginner teams doing extremely well.  Alot of the more advanced teams, were sure to hold off against some of the newer teams, knowing that they were a more talented team, tried to make it a little more fair for the other teams.

        Throughout the day, very few penalties, were given to any of the teams.  Everyone pretty much conformed to the rules and regulations, and made sure that there were no argument, disputes, or problems.  Games lasted about 2-3 minutes on the average, with most of the teams who were winning getting maxes (100 points of 100).  The temperature was in the high 90's; fortunately no one passed out.

        Team Yella lead the top ranks the entire day, losing only 1 game.  Team of honor and Team Fudge were both close behind, almost tied for 2nd place.  In the semi-finals, team Yella beat Team of Honor, but lost to Team Fudge.  Team of of Honor almost beat Fudge, and had a very close game against Yella.  After the finals, Team Fudge ended up taking first, Team Yella ended up in Second, and Team of Honor ended up finishing third.
 

        Leon of Tombstone Paintball made sure that all seven places ended up getting prizes, which seems to be a new fad in the tournament paintball.  It's not so much as to who wins the tournament, but as long as everyone gets something.  First place ended up winning 5 WGP Snipers, Second Place won a variety of prizes, as well as all of the places down to seventh.  First through third place also received trophies.

        All in all, it was an action packed tourney, which had a new twist to tournaments, being that it was strictly pump guns.  Pump Tourneys used to be more popular in the 80's (that's because most guns were pump).  Though it was open to just about any variation of "pump" setup, alot ot the teams played traditional "stock" setups with C02 and top drop feed.  Hopefully pump tournaments will start to catch on again like they used to be, with the game being more about skill and not hosing paint.  Being that it doesn't restrict players to on "stock" setups, it should start to attract more players in the future...

For more pictures from the Earon Carter Stock Class Invitational, goto the Photo Gallery

Sean Takeda
MPN Columnist