Issue date: 2/27/09 Section: MULTIMEDIA

Media Credit: Christena Dowsett History freshman, Colt "Happy" Wallace, coaches and competes with the NT paintball club. The team is currently ranked first in the nation for class AA paintball competition.

NT is noted for its arts programs, but one group of students is painting on something other than a canvas, and doing it better than just about everyone else.

The NTX paintball team is currently tied for No. 1 in the nation with three other clubs in the National Collegiate Paintball Association rankings.

"It's five on five capture the flag, but you pretty much have to shoot all the players to hang the flag on their box," senior and club president Clint Riddle said.

The team participates in the Class AA division playing "short" games that uses different rules and shorter games than the A division.

The flag hangs at the equivalent to the 50-yard-line in a 125 by 150 foot playing field, junior and club treasurer Zach Mora said.

The team has to navigate a field of obstacles and opposing team's fire to get the flag, and at the say time use an electric paintball marker to fire at the opposition. Not a paintball gun. "We call it a gun, we get in trouble," said freshman teammate Zak Zablostsky.

The team runs different two different lines at tournaments. They function like a varsity and junior varsity line. At times in the tournament, the two lines could face one another, Mora said.

"There's always that competitiveness, and that friendship there that's out on the field, but it's fun, because you can be like, I got ya," Mora said.

Continued...

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