On an average fall day in 2007, Tom Tomcat Cunningham, Team Captain for the Glen Morris Mercenaries Paintball Team reported to work as a part time referee at a local indoor paintball establishment.
A birthday party arrived, a mixture of kids 12 to 13 years of age all wide eyed and excited to play paintball for the first time. Tom as always read them those all too important rules and insured everyone was properly equipped before leading the group into the arena. Teams were split and each group took up their positions at opposite ends of the CQB style indoor and then the whistle blew to signal game on. Promptly both groups of kids proceeded to turn and jump into the furthest rear bunker at opposite ends of the room. So began a half hour or more of shooting wildly at each other from some distance without anyone hitting much of anything with the exception perhaps of an unfortunate referee on hand.
Thus an idea was born, as Tomcat observed the poor scrimmage before him, the wheels started turning. What if The Glen Morris Mercenaries were to establish a program to show kids of this age group how to actually play the game? A program giving young people in this general age group the basic building blocks to play paintball on a different and even more enjoyable level. From there the idea was pitched to the owner of the indoor paintball arena and co operatively an instructional Young Guns program was established.
In short, The Glen Morris Mercenaries Young Guns program met with great success on many levels. The program itself waived the entry fee but in turn saved the field owner monies having the sponsored team on hand for the instruction as opposed to paying employees. One of the other sponsored teams The Grand River Renegade Guerrillas (or GRRG as they like to be called) were approached to assist with administering the original program. The only cost to participants 10 – 14 years of age is the purchase of necessary paint. As the program became popular and parents saw their kids enjoying themselves, they in turn invested money in gear and paintball equipment for their child. By far out of all the different events The Glen Morris Mercenaries hosted, the Young Guns proved to be the most lucrative to our then sponsor by far.
The program met with further success as it also brought out the next generation of paintballer giving them the courage, confidence and a set of skills to play paintball. It also gave the kids the opportunity to paintball with lots of other kids in the same age group. Prior to every biweekly session, Tom read over all the paintball rules and went on to address some of the problems facing paintball these days. With almost daily reports in the media regarding misuse of paintball markers in public, The Mercenaries drummed into the young minds among other things how unacceptable such things are to the Scenario Paintball Community. One Young Gun went on to become an active member of the GRRG and yet another is now a full fledged member of The Glen Morris Mercenaries.
A secondary program has now been established at the new sponsors indoor arena at Flagswipe Paintball in London Ontario. It would be an overall goal to see and assist other paintball fields to adopt similar programs. After which perhaps a Scenario Young Guns league might be established, but for now lets just take one small step at a time.
