The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
If you're a rookie to paintball when playing with the Juno Beach Paintball Club, you could be thankful for the 200 feet of trenches that can protect you. Of course, you could also be thankful as a paintball vet. When you enter "Hamburger Hill", which is appropriately named after the movie by history war buff Dennis "Boots" Bouteiller, you might have the feeling you're in a war zone. Nobody would blame you. However, when you play, it's not just about shooting people. "The game is pretty strategic and you have to really think what you're going to do and where you're going to go Ð who your partners are with Ð who's watching your back. Are you watching their back?" Boots explained. The basic game paintball started with is capture the flag, where you have two teams and one would have to go and get the other team's flag and bring it up to their zone. Boots said they upscaled it a bit and built cannons, where you would also, besides getting the flag, have to go up, dismantle the team's two cannons and make your way back down. This year the club has added satchel bags with C-4 so you're going to get a mission, which besides maybe getting a flag and dismantling the cannon, you have to put in an explosive charge on your target so both teams are doing that during the scuttles. "It's just a lot more fun and adrenaline," Boots said. The course, located five minutes outside of town on Highway #10 to the right of the first causeway, has lots of trees, or no trees, lots of rocks. "It's got a little bit of everything," he said. "When you're playing that style of game, you've got more cover to hide from." And more things to hide in such as hotels, a King Tiger Tank, and a C-47 transport plane. That's right, there's a plane and it wasn't easy to bring. The Juno Beach Paint Ball Club takes the paint ball experience to a different level. "We felt by making a course that was suitable and add some pretty awesome looking attractions would make the game a lot funner," Boots explained. "We figured by doing it that way we would get more people to come out." The more, the merrier and it's not just about fun, it's exercise too. "It's a really good workout," he said. "In our location, being hilly in one end and low at the other, you're constantly going up and down Ð it's an adrenaline rush." If you want in on the fun, they play every Sunday at noon-sharp. Also, they recommend wearing dark clothing. For more information call Boots at 687-4742.
