I want
to expand upon something that I mentioned last August regarding the blog “Culture
in Paintball”. Several things have
happened in this off season in particular that have made me want to touch back
on this subject. And no, it has nothing
to do with the PSP’s new rules, etc. Everybody
and their mother has weighed in on that… no need for me to enter that arena as
I seriously doubt, based on the lines drawn, there is any true winner in that
debate.
Here is
what I had mentioned about “rituals” in that previous blog:
“Rituals/Traditions.
This is your paintball team’s identity or soul. These are what the team has in
common. It’s the glue that binds
teammates together. Rituals and traditions can be the setting up and taking
down of the field EVERY weekend, the meeting up at a favorite local restaurant
after practice, the workouts, the drills, rites of passage for new
members…(those can be interesting). You
get the picture.”
Mixing margaritas with the
Ironmen’s Mike Paxson in 2008. This
became a “ritual” albeit a dangerous one…
Let’s
face it. We live in a world of modernism
(is that a word?) where we are constantly bombarded with consumerism, the drive
(or lack thereof) to challenge ourselves, the increasing divide among us due to
different norms or the void of having shared values. The question then becomes, with all these
differences, how do we turn 8-10 guys into a team that won’t eventually self-implode? How do we confront these vacancies among us
and bring us back together? How can we
build a meaningful bond with our teammate that translates on and off the
field? How do we create that elusive
true sense of the term, “Team”?
Why,
rituals, of course.
Every
culture throughout existence has engaged in rituals. It would then hold that they are, in face, a
fundamental part of the human condition. Rituals can change things, solve
problems and accomplish things. Through
history we have used rituals to identify our “tribes”, to orient ourselves and
differentiate between others. A
paintball team without rituals will, overtime, collapse upon itself because there
is no means by which to identify it, nothing to be proud of, to achieve. The team will be bored and will eventually
cease to exist. If it somehow manages
to survive, you have a team of guideless zombies who have no life or pride
anyway. You know… democrats.
Okay,
so what exactly is “ritual”?
Ritual
can be defined as “Prescribed, established or ceremonial acts or features of a collective.” Quite simply, a ritual is something a group
of likeminded people do regularly for a specific purpose or reason. Here is a good example: Waving to someone or
shaking someone’s hand. There is no real
reason why waving your hand at someone or gripping another’s hand and shaking
it equates to a greeting or establishment of acquaintance. It is culturally relative (there’s that word “culture”
again… hang in there). However, washing
your hands in order to clean them is not a ritual as there is a direct
correlation between your action and a desired result. To use my Catholic faith as an example, when
the priest splashes water on his hands at Mass during the Liturgy of the
Eucharist, this is a ritual since the water is not necessarily intended to
remove bacteria.
Team Owner/Captain Mikey McGowan
participating in the ritual of the “high five” with Coach Shane Pestana of the
Los Angeles Ironmen. Co- Captain yours truly
participating in the ritual of paintball gun safety in the background.
Okay…
enough with establishing what it is and my silly attempt at explaining Catholic
Mass. To the point:
A
ritual in paintball should be developed as something that carries value to the
team. It should instill in the team a
behavior. And most successful teams
establish these aspects (culture) from the get go. The ritual of drilling a skill set. The ritual of donning the same jersey. The ritual of always being polite to the referees
and playing honestly (or dishonestly in some cases). All in all, paintball rituals should involve
discipline. By enforcing the ritual, it
should create a desired set of effects.
Precise repetition leads to better physical control or what we
constantly harp about at Prime as “muscle memory”.
But
there have to be rules. Rules regulate
the ritual. If you “cheat” the ritual
i.e. break the rules of the drill, the desired effect cannot be accomplished. Let’s remember the purpose of a ritual, “to
have a specific purpose”. The point of ritualistic
paintball is to lead to an increase in performance. Put another way, it is essentially thought
plus action. A ritual consists of doing something in your mind while
simultaneously connecting it to doing something with your body.
A
ritual does not have to be some grand thing.
It can be something as small as sharing an energy drink each morning
before practice. But it should involve
these key takeways:
1. It
should bring the team together
2. It
should have a purpose/goal
3. It
should be shared among all members of the team
4. It
should help establish a team’s identity.
This ritual sucked…
Hopefully
this post has helped you understand something... I honestly don’t know what I
was trying to say when I started it.
There was a point. I guess, if
you are a lousy human being and you lead a paintball team, you will probably
create more lousy human beings with your ritualistic behavior. I prefer to create good people who are good
at paintball. Your team can define you
as an individual. Hopefully, your rituals are positive in
nature. If not, should my team and yours
meet on the field, I promise our ritualistic approach will outdo yours… unless
your ritual involves bribing refs or the ritual of cheating, etc. Even then, I believe the ritual of winning
will come into play. And we play to
win. Ritualistically speaking…
