Take your child paintballing

With several paintball sport arenas providing international quality equipment mushrooming in the metros and tier II cities, many families are enthusiastically taking to this recreational sport – K.P. Malini With state governments easing Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, many families are cautiously starting to engage in outdoor sports and adventure activities. One outdoor activity which is fast gaining popularity is paintballing, a sport where teams of players pretend to be in a warzone, shooting each other with small paintballs of different colours from an air weapon called paintball marker. With several paintball sport arenas providing international quality equipment mushrooming in the metros and tier II cities, many families are enthusiastically taking to this recreational sport. According to Wikipedia, paintballing is “a competitive team shooting sport in which players eliminate opponents from play by hitting them with spherical dye-filled gelatin capsules (paintballs) that break on impact. Paintballs are usually shot using a low-energy air weapon called paintball marker that is powered by compressed air (nitrogen) or carbon dioxide.” The paintballs are non-toxic, water soluble and bio-degradable. “Paintballing has emerged as a popular recreational sport in India. In families it’s a fun sport for children with corporates also playing it for team building purposes,” says Swapneel Shetty, CEO, PaintBall X, Bangalore (estb. 2011) who adds that the garden city hosts over 30 paintball arenas. Even though this game is played mainly as a recreational sport, it is also emerging as a competitive team game with several foreign countries organising professional tournaments. In India too, competitive paintball tournaments are being held in several cities including Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai. Shetty is a member of Team X which played at the National X Ball League 2018 — Asia held in Malaysia and was placed #5 in the tournament. According to Shetty, the game can be played indoors or outdoors in fields of varying size called concepts, a mix of natural terrain and man-made obstacles. The most popular gameplay is to capture the enemy’s flag followed by elimination, defending or attacking a particular point or area, or capturing objects of interest hidden in the concept area, or just plain shooting at sight within a specified time frame. Games played outdoors in natural terrain can last one or two days. Paintballing was created by Americans, Charles Gaines and Bill Gurnsey, in 1981. Together with 12 friends, they played the first paintball game using industrial paintball guns on a 100 acre field. In India, paintball dates back to 2005 when TPCI (The Paintball Co) signed up with PALS (Paintball Asia League Series), which governs the sport in the Asian circuit, to launch the country’s first commercial paintball park on the outskirts of the national capital at Damdama Lake in Gurgaon, Haryana. Over time, this recreational game has become more sophisticated with people grouping into teams. New concepts and styles of play are being continuously developed. The basic game is that players must attain a pre-decided goal without being shot and marked with a paintball. Eliminated players are expected to…