Paintball x3

John: You had mentioned something about the UWL ranking will help teams get sponsorship. Explain.

Tom: In most paintball leagues you have to travel and attend lots of events to become a high ranking team. With our league you only have to play two in your region and you will be ranked in that conference. So instead of telling your sponsors "we are a good woodsball team," you will be able to say, "We're the 3rd ranked team in the South." Sponsors are watching their marketing budget now more then ever and regionally based sponsorships are a good bang for a sponsors buck. Individual players benefit even more. A player could play for years before his or her name gets in a magazine. Now with the UWL's individual stats, after one event a player could see his name in print.

What was your motivation behind starting the UWL? 

Tom: The industry needs to spend more time promoting the game of paintball. We forgot how fun it is to run around the woods with a gun and shoot your friends.

How has the announcement of the league been received by players?

Tom: I have gotten a much better response then I would have expected. I have old school people I have not talked to in years contacting me.

Are you getting support from sponsors?

Tom: We are working on that and making progress. So yes.

Do you see this move back to the woods as something that will continue to grow?

Tom: I don't see how it can not. The woods are a great equalizer that anyone can play. Speedball is designed around fast moving small targets. Not all of us are built that way.

Talk about what makes your format different than other woodsball tournament formats.

Tom: The biggest is the Skills Division. in the Skills division we limit the amount of electronic guns any team can have. I am trying to create a place for people to play where it is not all about how much paint you can shoot. For those that don't like that we have the Open Division. This is pretty much any gun goes. We also have added positions. Sniper uses a pump gun, Ranger uses a non electronic marker. Same thing as before if you don't like this option just play in the open Division and don't elect to have positions.

The 11th man playing with a pump-gun is an interesting concept. How did that come about?

Tom: We are just trying to get everyone involved.  Plus how cool would it be to be ranked the best Sniper in the world?

What are your goals for this season?

Tom: We are looking at getting the word out and do what we can to make our game fun for as many players as possible. That's really it. We'll let the season play out and evaluate as we go along.

How many teams do you expect or hope for at each event?

Tom: We expect go get 24 to 30 per event. We do think the game we're running along side of OK D-Day is going to be the biggest.

Thanks Tom.

For more information visit, the Ultimate Woodsball League.