So I had been in contact with Bea Young over e-mail about taking Mike Paxson's clinic for awhile now, and the team finally decided they all wanted to do it. If they didn't then I was going by myself because I wanted to step up my game. Thankfully, everyone was in high spirits.
So I drove up with Elier, Max, Johnny, and William (Elier's little friend). We were all excited, especially Johnny who said if he saw Bea he was going to flirt with her (I didn't want to tell him she was pregnant and ruin his fantasy). We arrived at the field at 8-ish AM. Did I mention that I woke up at 4:30AM to make sure that I'd be there when Mike got there?
Regardless, we all got there and the field looked horrible. The bunkers were all deflated. The netting was down. We looked at each other and I know I was wondering if a hurricane came through or if I was being Punked. Johnny was very vocal about his displeasement. Very vocal! I mean he exploded.
15 minutes later Mike arrives. Johnny shuts up and you can start to see the stars in his eyes. I was starstruck too. I saw this guy bounce paint off a bunker in the World Cup final to gogg a Philly player in a 1on1.
There was some mix-up in the early money, which caused me to lose $60 out of the blue, so my cost for the trip was over $100 that day.
We geared up and got ready for an exciting day of paintball. When we were all ready and the field was set up it was around 9:00AM. We went out on the field with Mike and within the first 5 minutes he opened our game up 100%. He introduced us to new lanes to shoot off break to kill corner players and the back center. This is where we've really sucked, and we all knew it. We would shoot off break but it would never land where we wanted. Our lanes blew like every other divisional team. I haven't met any good breakout divisional teams in Miami. I think that's the major problem. We all mimick the same style and it's the wrong style so the whole of Miami suffers.
Well it's not like we became instant successes. We worked at it throughout the day. Even though it didn't feel comfortable, we kept up with it. It payed off because by the end of the day we started actually shooting people off the break. Mike said he was impressed by it, I know I was. I may not have hit anyone off the break that day, but my team was picking it up quickly.
We still suck though. I know I shouldn't bad mouth my own team, but I'm not naming anyone. We suck as an aggregate. The team has plenty of stuff to work on to get better, which I have no problem with. I know though that after we get these techniques down then we'll have an edge over established Divisional teams.
By the way, Mike's personal DM9 is awesome. Nicely tuned.
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