When he's not busy with work or his three children, Sundre's own Brad Webb enjoys diving across a field shooting paintballs travelling as fast as 300 feet per second at people.
But it's not your average game of paintball.
Thirty-two-year-old Webb captains a competitive paintball team that has qualified to play in the highest division in Western Canada in the national tournament, to be held in Edmonton in January.
“When most people think about paintball they think crawling around in the woods and crawling under trees, under bushes, stuff like that – that is definitely not the case,” said Webb.
“The tournament style paintball is a lot different.”
In competitive paintball, the playing field is roughly 170 feet long and 125 feet wide, and durable inflatable bunkers are set up throughout the course. It's a fast-paced game and most games only last a total of three minutes.
“It's a very small area so with the paintballs travelling at 300 feet a second, which is just shy of 200 miles an hour, you have to be able to identify where the person is and get out of the way or try to put him behind a bunker in, well under half a second,” he explained.
He refers to the average game of paintball as woodsball and competitive paintball as speedball.
He has wanted to start a competitive paintball team since he was 17 years old, but didn't have the time to commit to it until recently. He started his current team, Pandamonium, in 2012. All of his teammates are married and most of them have children.
Two of his teammates, Anthony Smethurst and Curtis MacDonald, are also from Sundre. The three of them work at Sundre Forest Products together and they also went to high school together in Sundre.
His other teammates are from Calgary and one is from Okotoks. Most of the tournaments are held in Bragg Creek or Edmonton.
“The camaraderie with the guys is great. We come from all different walks of life. Although three of us do work out at the mill, on our team we have a police officer, a mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer, an electrician, and we have all come together for our love of the sport,” he said, adding the team has come a long way since it formed.
“Over the past two years we've gone from pretty much close to the bottom of our division, up to the number 1 team, which is really hard to do,” he said.
The team won the series championship this year, which he is extremely proud of.
He recalls when the team won its first tournament and says it was a great moment.
“At that point in time we weren't too sure where the direction of the team was headed. We knew we wanted to keep going, but we didn't know if we were going to be able to keep competing at that level. And then everything just seemed to click for us and we came out stomping and just demolished everybody and won the tournament,” he said.
“When we won, it was a huge accomplishment for us. All the guys were hugging and high-fiving and there were a few tears shed. Everyone was just ecstatic and since then we've just continued to become an even better team.”
The team practises every other week and the sport is played year-round – outdoors in the summer and indoors in the winter. But Webb says the best weather to play in is 15 C and a little overcast.
He has always been a competitive person and enjoyed playing competitive sports when he was in school, as well as hockey.
“It's nice to try to push yourself against other people and with a team,” he said.
He played his first game of paintball – or woodsball – when he was 12 years old at Weekend Warriors for a friend's birthday.
“I remember going out and getting shot in the head and thinking to myself it was really going to hurt. It hit the mask and when it happened I was more surprised than anything,” he said.
Over time he has become used to being hit by paintballs and receiving the occasional welt during a game.
“Every now and then you'll end up getting shot from just a few feet away and that really hurts. You'll just end up with a red mark, it might bleed a little bit.”
Outside of paintball, he enjoys spending time with his eight-year-old daughter Keely, seven-year-old daughter Sophie, five-year-old son Owen, as well as girlfriend Becky Kaiser.
He also enjoys working out and keeping in shape, watching UFC fights with his friends, and has called Sundre his home for his entire life.
