ProPaintball caught up with Tim Montressor of Edmonton Impact. Tim reflects back on the NPPL Chicago event where they placed 4th. Below is what he had to say…

Losing sucks.  I have nothing more poetic or elegant to say about the 2011 Chicago NPPL now that I’m home.  I could write you a laundry list of excuses or reasons as to why we didn’t win.  I could fill a small notebook with various ideas and insights that could hypothesize why we got fourth place in Chicago instead of first, but I’d be providing you with worthless drivel that will ultimately amount to nothing.  In the end we lost and it’s unbelievably frustrating and annoying.

I would be remiss to not admit that I had planned on winning a tournament or two by now when I joined Edmonton Impact this offseason.  The team had come off a great year in 2010 and with the addition of Chad George, I really felt like we were the most well rounded squad in both leagues.  The results would say otherwise and are a constant reminder that our high hopes and expectations have yet to come to fruition.  With the NPPL season already half over, the team really needs to perform much better in DC and Vegas to live up to the hype that we created amongst ourselves.

As for the event, I have to say that I really hope that they start to put all the pro games on Saturday instead of chopping up both divisions between two days.  Personally, having class late Thursday night, catching 6 a.m. flights on Friday mornings and getting to the field with minimal or no sleep is not too much fun.  With more and more guys in the league nearing the end of their college degrees or getting new jobs, getting time off isn’t quite as easy as it used to be.  Nonetheless, the site itself was nice.  Challenge Park has a great venue and even though there were only two fields set up for the NPPL, the facility was packed since the Living Legends scenario game was held at the same time about 1000 feet away from where the grandstands were located.

Edmonton Impact’s weekend started out well.  While I was chained down to a desk, sentenced to learn about Human Resources Development, the rest of the team flew in early and got a solid practice with some of the other pro teams on Thursday.  The additional practice proved useful as the team finished 5-2 after the prelims and headed into Sunday 2^nd in our bracket.  The league made a few changes since Huntington Beach and chose to use the old format of two eight team brackets for the prelims and using a round robin schedule.  For Sunday, the top eight teams from the prelims were divided into two brackets of four and the same format from HB was used in which teams played the other three teams in a best out of three series.  Because of our seeding we played Oakland Blast, Portland Uprising and Tampa Bay Damage.  We were able to beat Tampa Bay in two straight games, we lost to Blast in two games and then beat Uprising in three games.  After some long point counting and averaging, we ended up playing Dynasty to see which team would play in the finals.  We were systematically beat in two long drawn out games.  Nothing special to write about other than I’m not quite sure if I mentioned that losing sucks.  Because the tournament went longer than expected and the American guys had flights that we had to catch so that Ryan didn’t miss his five hour Monday afternoon class, we chose to play one game for third/fourth placed instead of a best two out of three.  This time around, Uprising got their revenge.

The award for biggest surprise of the event has to go to Portland Uprising.  If XSV’s performance in HB came as a surprise, then Uprising’s performance in Chicago must have been viewed as a bombshell.  The team looked good the whole weekend and my fellow Impact teammate, Cole “Please don’t call me Scott Cole” Scott showed some great moves and was one of the many players on the squad that helped to elevate Portland’s showing from last place to third place.

I can’ t believe that Dynasty has won four straight tournaments.  They’ve been a good team for a long time, but adding Oliver, Dalton and Mouse has turned the team from average last year to this year’s best team…..so far.  Personally, I hate seeing them win again because I’m a competitor and would much rather see myself win, but they have a good team and have proven that their hard work and plethora of talent can produce great results.  I would comment on how their finals game went down against Avalanche and about how Frank beat up all the Dynasty players with one hand tied behind his back, but truthfully I was so disgusted after taking fourth place that I put my gear in my bag and was back in our team van so fast, that the finals hadn’t even started and I didn’t watch either of the games.

Right now Impact is switching gears and getting ready to head back to Chicago in a few weeks for the PSP event that will be held at Challenge Park again.  We have some good practices lined up, including a grind session with Vicious in Omaha the weekend before the event.  I feel that the dynamics of the team are improving and we’re starting to flow much better on and off the field, so I expect good results for the next event.  Since these articles are supposed to provide some insight into “Pro” teams and the players, I’ll be completely honest and say that I always feel that we’re going to, or supposed to, win every tournament even if we played terrible in practice.  It’s the competitive nature in me, my team, and most long time pro players that continuously drives us to live this silly lifestyle and chase the dream of winning paintball tournaments.

I hope that it never sounds repetitive because it’s said with honesty and adoration, but as always I would like to thank our fans that have cheered us at every event and followed our results online.  Additionally, I would like to thank our amazing sponsors for providing us with the best equipment and assistance in the world:  Planet Eclipse, Draxxus, Go Paintball, Mr. Paintball, Ninja Paintball, PB Action Games, Exalt and V-Force. Without everyone’s support, our achievements would not be possible.

 

Feature image by Jeff “Stince” Stinson
JeffyPhoto.com