nVs - 1st Runner-up!
Super 7’s Rnd 1
Dye Asia Cup
By Dye Sponsored Team nVs - Nathan McDonnell
After a short offseason, together with learning and practicing new rule changes, we were ready for Round 1 of the Australian Super 7s Series at Action Paintball Games Sydney. However, the new rules meant new bunkers. New bunkers meant the new field wouldn’t arrive until a week later than originally expected. Round 1 was pushed back a week to 27 February, 2016. The delay meant 2 of our players couldn’t attend due to weddings so we were now a 5 man squad for this event.
Friday arrived and after catching an early flight into Sydney Nick Bancroft and myself met up with Craig McIver from Hard2Overcome. We then headed off to the field to inspect the layout. The field was interesting as it was very open on the Snake side but very closed on the Dorito side. After walking the layout and sorting out some lanes, breakouts and game plans we headed back to Karl and Gloria’s house for a feed. I don’t know if you know, but not only is our team known for our on field success, we are also known for our awesome team dinners. Tonight was no different. We fired up the rotisserie and had an awesome roast Lamb for dinner.
Saturday
With only 5 players for the day we knew pacing ourselves was going to be a key factor for success. We knew we would be facing off against 3 of the competition contenders. Our 1st match of the day was against HK Reapers. This was a tough match as both teams were finding their feet with the new rules and game plans. After a couple of close calls we came away with the 3-2 victory. Our 2nd match was against Eastside Raw. After getting a few quick kills early on we took the match with a 4-0 win. The 3rd match was against Sydney Explicit. We were interested to see how this played out as Marcello Margott is not on their roster this year. After some heated exchanges and solid games we finished off on top 3-2. Our 4th match of the day was against Frequency, a new team to the Pro division this year. This match was over fairly quickly with us winning 4-0. The 5th and final match of the day was against our nemesis Sydney SWAT. SWAT brought over Justin Cornell from Edmonton Impact to help them out. We were on point this match - getting early kills off the break and shutting down their wide runners. We finished the day off strong with another victory at 4-0.
Sunday
Today we only had 2 more prelim matches before finals. We faced off against Phoenix FC (another new team to Pro) and Expendables from New Zealand. We defeated both of these teams 5-1 and 4-0 respectively. At the end of the prelims the results were nVs, Explicit, SWAT, Eastside Raw. The 1st game of the semi-finals was nVs –v- Raw. After some quick points and great sportsmanship we finished with the win, which saw us go into the Grand Final. We would face the winner of the match between Explicit and SWAT and we waited in anticipation. Once the dust had settled, SWAT came out on top. We knew we weren’t going in to an easy match.
The Grand Final was a tough match, easily our toughest match of the weekend. SWAT came out swinging and drew 1st blood. After loosing the 1st and 2nd points, we regrouped and came back winning the 3rd. Not to be outdone SWAT dug in deep to take the match to time and walk away with a 4-2 win.
We were pretty disappointed that we lost the event but there’s 3 more to go so it’s going to be an interesting season.
We would like to thank our wonderful pit crew Gloria Simpson and Craig “Flash” McIver and our sponsors Paintball Addiction, Dye Precision and Devon Stutz. Our new M2s shot flawlessly out of the box. We can’t wait to see you at the next round in May.
By Dye Sponsored Team nVs - Nathan McDonnell
