The NPPL and its Warm-Up event

Author: David Diaz

Who is the NPPL warming up March 28th which is about 2 weeks away from their season opener at Huntington Beach, CA? I doubt its the players.

Since the warm-up is so close to the actual date of the event why would players spend more money before? Especially since those that will be playing HB have already signed up and may or may not have paid their entry for the event.

So who are they trying to capture? Teams that still might want to play? Maybe, but seeing how the only prize is free entry to HB only for 1st place of each division, its like winning a car on Wheel Of Fortune. Yeah you get a car, but you have pay all the taxes and fees associated with the prize. Here if you win 1st place and want to take advantage of the prize you have to now spend more money to attend the HB event meaning lodging, food, and PAINT.

For those who are already playing HB and are considering playing the warm up event should then have those cost already considered. For those teams then the warm up is more like a gamble. Pay $350 for entry and whatever costs associated with the amount of paint they will use (seeing that its field paint only. Hmm..) and if they win 1st place they may come up on a slight discount from the price of entry to HB they were going to pay previously.

That is assuming that if a team has already paid for entry to HB and that if they won, the NPPL would refund them the entry already paid, or let the teams that won the 1st place prizes to able to hold on to that prize for a future NPPL event. However, nowhere in the email did it say the NPPL would. The email also sends you to the host field's website to sign-up but nowhere on the site can I find any info about the warm up event nor a sign-up page at the time of this writing.

So who is really being warmed up? In my opinion the league is warming up their pockets. The only value I see out of this event is a possible good time playing paintball, but if you were already planning on playing HB or were never planning on playing HB then you must understand the additional cost of a superfluous event where the only prize is entry into an event that is already rapidly approaching.

By no means am I discouraging a team to participate in the warm up, but after reading the email I found that it was imperative to make sure that all have their eyes open to what the warm up event really is. Think to yourself or come to a team decision and ask, “do I have to play the warm up?” Ask if the additional effort to play the warm up is worth the possible prize and ask if you will even play HB. Because if you are you should be signed up already.