Hard2Overcome Heads to New Zealand
by: Team Hard2Overcome
photos by: Morgan Lane Photography
When it comes to planning for your team to play an event things can go
smoothly or something can go wrong and put a spanner in the works. Add the fact that you're planning your team to play in another country and you know no matter how well you plan ahead something is bound to go wrong no matter how big or small which is exactly what happened with Dye sponsored team Hard2Overcome when they flew from Australia to New Zealand to play for the Asylum Cup.
The week leading up to the event hit the team with its first curveball, when
it was announced that airport customs were having random industrial
disputes. This would see the team packing the car and heading off on the 2hr drive to Melbourne airport at 2am Friday morning. Once at the airport with the teams bags checked in for the 7am flight the team sat back and relaxed waiting to board the flight that was now delayed 40 minutes.
Upon arrival to New Zealand everything went smoothly and within the hour we are on the motorway heading directly to Asylum Paintball where the team would spend the next hour walking the field before shopping for food and then to the holiday home booked for the weekend.
The team grabbed some takeaway for dinner before going over all of their
gear in preparation for the next day before heading off to bed and around
2am seen the final 2 players arrive at the house after flying in from
Brisbane and heading straight to bed to get some rest.
We got off to a slow start on Saturday after dropping our first game and
continued on with an up and down day like most teams finishing with
1W-1D-2L. We went back to the house to freshen up and look at breaking down what went wrong and to see what we could do to improve our game plans. Things took a turn for the worse when we realised our house was without power, so while we still had light outside we all quickly had showers before heading out to have dinner at a restaurant up the road.
Much to our disappointment upon returning we became aware that not only was the house still without power, but we were the only house in the street in darkness. Calls were made to the contact numbers left by the agency but we were forced to leave messages on answering machines. Needless to say we were not amused about servicing some markers by candle light and team mates using their mobile phones as torches. To top it off Luke's partner Katie who came over to help the team out lost her footing and fell down the spiral staircase in the night and was lucky not to badly injure herself. The final straw with the house was with no power the internal alarm went off and could not be stopped so the team had no choice but to evacuate the house and accept a vacant room at a motel thanks to Vitaly who owns and runs Asylum Paintball.
With all of the team on edge because of the screwed up accommodation we arrived at the field looking to make up for Saturdays poor effort. And as we had hoped, the small tweaking we did with our lanes paid off and we finished Sunday with 3W-1D. We like every team had to wait 20 minutes while the scores we submitted to see if we had made any finals as we were concerned that the draw on Sunday may have knocked us out of playing finals. In the end we scraped into the finals by that draw to play Auckland Faction for 3rd but missed out on playing for 1st & 2nd because of that same draw.
The first 2 points of the final we came out aggressive getting kills off the
break and finishing the points fast. The rest of the final would see the
points being drawn out with faction winning the next 2, before we won back a point to be sitting at 3-2 with just under 2 minutes left on the clock. We knew they would come at us to try and tie the game so we would go to overtime, so we got to our primary bunkers and wait for them to come. And come they did with a rush through the centre in the final minute drawing a major penalty and giving us the win 4-2.
We would like to thank Katie and Dell for all their help and support over
the weekend. A massive shout out to our mates on Phoenix Tahiti for all the help in the pits during the finals, you guys rock. Thank you to Morgz for coming along and making us all look good with your outstanding photography. We must thank Vitaly and everyone at Asylum Paintball for all of your hospitality and helping us with our accommodation issues. To our sponsors Dye Precision, Devon Stutz and Paintball Addiction thank you for your continuing support and allowing us to use the best equipment available. Lastly, we also want to thank everyone who supports the team and to everyone we met in New Zealand for making us feel so welcome.