| 2008 PSP World Cup-10 Things to Know |
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| Written by John Amodea | |||||||||
| Thursday, 11 December 2008 15:24 | |||||||||
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Share Once again the PSP and its rolling road show held their season-ending finale event at the Wide World of Sports complex on Disney property, in Kissimmee, Florida. The event featured teams from the NXL, Divisions One through Three X-Ball, Division Four, 5-Man, and an over-40 Masters Division. In addition to the game there was a trade show, tons of new products that debuted, and side events all week long. World Cup Photo Gallery  Photos By Tim Larson, Meagan Foster, Matt Aman & Jeff Thomas Things to Know #1: This was the 15th World Cup event held in Florida, since the even was moved from Newburg, NY in 1994. New Products at the PSP World CupThe World Cup trade show attendance gained strength as the week went on. By the time the weekend rolled in isles and booths were packed all day long. Empire Paintball (and the rest of the KEE brands) had a huge setup at this year’s Cup. Debuting their ’09 line of products, the Empire mobile showroom was packed around the clock and players were raving about the new Empire apparel and other interesting Empire and Invert gear. Smart Parts, I mean Luxe, had by far the most creative booth at the Cup this year. Designed in a Venetian theme, stone columns and all Things to Know #2: The Ironmen won their first Florida World Cup in 2000, three years after the team split in 1997. An interesting find we happened into at the Cup was a new product from Predator Games. Their new drop in unit turns your Tippmann 98 Custom into a fully electronic laser tag gun, capable of networking with dozens of other guns. Among the dozens of amazing features, the unit tracks eliminations, is programmable for a variety of game types, and it can upload game results to the internet as they happen. Stiffi released their new barrel cover at the Cup. This one is made from the same materials as their barrels—meaning no more turning the cover inside out if you shoot a ball into it. Just hose or spray out the cover and you’re good to go. Activision also had their new game, NPPL Championship Paintball 2009 at the Cup. Players and spectators got a chance to play the game until the PSP pulled the plug on Activision, allegedly because of their allegiance to the NPPL, a competitive league. The Pinokio Hoppers booth was busy all weekend with players checking out their unique extendable hopper. Ben Tippmann (thanks for lunch Ben) was in the BT Paintball compound grilling burgers and dogs for staff and friends. Custom Products and Guerrilla Air were rocking all week. Guerrilla’s new Machete bottom-line was the talk of their area of the trade show. More of the hottest products at the Cup… Eclipse Ego9 and Geo Planet Eclipse has enjoyed their position as the upstart darling of the paintball world thanks to the incomparable success of their Ego paintball gun. Thanks to reliability, simplicity, customer service and style, the fast shooting Ego has taken tournament paintball by storm and carved a massive chunk of business out of the high-end paintgun market for Eclipse. The 2009 model saw drastic changes for the new year, including even more cutting of metal to make a lighter, smaller, tighter design, while the trigger guard was drastically opened to allow more finger room and higher rates of fire. The Ego9 wasn’t alone at the top of the Eclipse food chain however, as it was joined by a completely new spool valve marker for the 2008 World Cup, the Geo. Small, compact and fast, the Geo took to the field alongside its Ego brethren in the hands of players on top teams like X-Factor and proved a simple but impressive machine. Perhaps the best-kept secret in paintball’s recent history, Dye released their Rotor high speed tournament paintball loader at the World Cup and it immediately became the hit of the event. Things to Know #4: The 2008 World Cup was the first time in 15 years that Rosie (Bob Rose) was not part of the PSP’s site staff or a team’s roster. Empire Gear Always a leader in style and comfort since smashing into paintball several years ago, Empire clothing again turned heads with its combination of an edgy, stylish look with high performance features. A dark colors mixed with white is clearly the new thing and Empire has taken this look to a whole new level with pinstripe, checkerboard and black plaid patterns in the Limited Edition line. Padded, reinforced, ventilated and stretchy in all the right places for the optimum mix of comfort and performance, Empire’s new line is good enough for top pros like Infamous, the Russians, X-Factor and Impact. With everything from gear bags and backpacks to elbow pads, knee pads, jerseys, pants, gloves, bottle covers and even E-Vents goggles new, improved and redesigned, 2009 could be the best looking year yet for Empire and the players wearing it. DerDer Progression DVD
Things to Know #5: From 1994-1999, Aftershock won the World Cup four times. Only the All Americans and Image could win the ‘Cup in the Pro division in that six year span. The Games NXL Day one and two NXL games feature only five teams—the bottom five in the league’s rankings heading into the World Cup. Those teams playing on Wednesday and Thursday were Chicago Aftershock, Edmonton Impact, Oakland Infamous, Seattle Naughty Dogs and Tampa Bay Damage, each vying for a chance to win and move on to play against the top five teams, who were all awarded two days of byes. Playing on Wednesday and Thursday Chicago Aftershock went 0 for four, losing each of their games by three or more points. The Seattle Naughty dogs won only one of their four preliminary round games. Tampa Bay Damage won three, losing only to Edmonton Impact, who went 4-0 in day one and two play. Things to Know #6: With their 2008 World Cup victory the Ironmen now have back to back World Cup wins for the first time since the event moved to Florida. NXL Teams with first round byes: Dynasty Ironmen Legion X-Factor Americans Later in the week things got very interesting in the NXL. After the first round of elimination games in the NXL all of the remaining teams played best of three series’. Surprisingly Impact took down and sent home Dynasty in back to back one-point games. The Ironmen took out Damage with 6-4 and 6-3 wins. The Russian Legion easily sent Infamous packing with two wide margin victories. And the only round to go three games was the Americans and X-Factor. Philly took the first game 9-5 and X-Factor bounced back in game two with a 7-7 overtime win, forcing a third game. Philly won that one 8-6. On Saturday the Ironmen ended Impact’s season early, as Philly beat the Russians. This set up a final round between two of the longest running professional franchises in paintball, the Ironmen and Americans. Game one saw Philly take the first point. Then a three minute major penalty against Tim Montrossor (very questionable call) gave the Ironmen all they needed to score the next five points on the way to an easy victory. Game two saw a determined Philly team make a late game comeback to win in overtime, tying the series at one game each. In the deciding game between the two teams Philly came out strong, taking an early two point lead. It didn’t last however, as the Ironmen wind up winning the game by four points. Congrats to Ollie and the ‘Men. Things to Know #7: Since moving to Florida the World Cup’s playing site has changed three times. Divisions One, Two & Three Damage D1 came out smoking in Division One with four straight wins by a combined score of 26-8. After a tough 6-5 win over Cross-Eyed Paintball, Vicious won their next three in complete dominating fashion. Palm Beach Venom looked like the best Division One team playing in the Division Two bracket early on. Seriously they won their four games 7-0, 7-2, 7-3, and 7-1. The New Jersey Jesters were not too shabby either with 7-0, 7-1, 7-1, and 6-4 preliminary round wins. In Division Three Velocity Wrecking Crew and Raiden Black won their first four games, barely getting their jerseys dirty with three 5-0 wins and a 5-1 victory each. In all there were 11 teams that won all four of their first round games. Things to Know #8: The 200 World Cup was the first time that X-Ball was played at the World Cup. It was done in an exhibition on Disney property, even though the event was not held at Disney that season. In Division One the RNT All Stars have had an amazing season. Since X-Ball was introduced in 2003 no team in any division had won four events in a row until the RNT All Stars did that this season. Going into the Cup they were hoping to make it a clean sweep of the division and the season with an unprecedented fifth win in a row… but it was not to be. Vicious, the second ranked Division One team this season completed a nice year of their own winning the World Cup and beating RNT 7-1 along the way. The Palm Beach Vipers finished second in Division One, while Damage D1 beat RNT in the consolation game to take third place. Fierce beat the New Jersey Jesters in the Division Two finals to take the Cup and edge out Raiden for the overall Division Two rankings title for 2008 (by a mere 4 seed points). Raiden beat Shockwave Canada 6-5 to take third place in Division Two. In Division Three, Fierce Army came out of nowhere to win the World Cup in just their first event of the season, taking down Team unlimited in the finals. Chicago Wiseguys took out Velocity Wrecking Crew to take third place in the division. The Purdue University Boilermakers beat the Army Black Knights to take the Collegiate Division and the Draxxus All Stars won the Masters Division. Things to Know #9: In the 1993 World Cup (held in NY) the UK Predators finished in second place. This was the highest placing a non US team had ever finished in any World Cup. They had a chance to win it but two American teams allegedly fixed a game so they would not. With the close of the 2008 PSP World Cup we await the NPPL San Diego Commander’s Cup and the official end of the tournament paintball season. Final Rankings for 2008 NXL (Unofficial, PSP has not posted the official rankings as of this date) 1st – Ironmen 2nd – Dynasty 3rd – Boston Red Legion 4th – Philly Americans Division One 1st - RNT All Stars 2nd - Vicious 3rd - Damage D1 4th - TX Justice League Division Two 1st - Fierce 2nd - Raiden 3rd - New Jersey Jesters 4th - DBS Kidz Division Three 1st - Velocity Wrecking Crew 2nd - DSSP8ntball.com 3rd - Total Karnage 4th - Team Unlimited Things to Know #10: 1995 World Cup new products included the PMI Piranha, Air America’s Vigilante regulator, J&J’s first ceramic barrel fronts, and Unique Sporting’s web pack.
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| Last Updated on Sunday, 28 December 2008 19:22 |
The latest in the long line of DerDer DVD releases, Progression features a new set of professional players smashing one-another on the field and talking about the game they play and the lives they lead. Well-made and enjoyable to watch in a style only DerDer has managed to perfect, players like Rusty Glaze of Infamous, 