Speed ball arrives on Campus

The cops show up at the bank, denying any hopes of escape. Their backs to the wall, the robbers commence a shoot out to get away.

The gunfight is on; both sides are extremely close with rapid firing guns. Each side tried to gain the advantage over the other. The fight is fast and intense.

His heart was pumping with adrenaline as he ran at the start of the whistle, Brain Paine slid into a bunker under a hail of fire. Getting up, he returned fire as fast as he could pull the trigger.

Paine is a member of the new Norwich speedball team; in February, it played its first tournament of the semester.

"On the field it's going to be relentless, they're going to come at us we are going to go at them and winner takes all," said Paine, a 20–year-old sophomore criminal justice major from Lynnfield, Mass.

Speedball is a fast-paced, close-quarters shootout between two teams of five players each. The point of the game it to eliminate everyone on the other team and get its flag.

Throughout the arena there are objects called "bunkers." Each person is assigned to an area or bunkers, and they fight from the position trying to move up on the other team.

The Norwich team played against eight other schools with more experience. The NU team played well against the other teams but came up short of winning.

"The other teams were really good out there. It doesn't matter who's playing, it's just intense, period," said Jared LaBello, a 23-year-old senior criminal justice major from Midlothian, Va.

Norwich played each team twice, a total of 16 matches in the two-day event, held in Syracuse, N.Y.

Paine said that many of the teams approached them after the tournament, and told NU that they had a lot of heart and fought hard.

"We have learned quite a bit, we are a brand-new team and we got brand-new players, we learned quite a bit," LaBello said. "We have to start learning better communication skills because it gets very loud in there, there's quite a bit to work on out there."

The team was put in the toughest bracket against the most experienced teams. Many games were close and came down to the last man standing.

"We had a lot of new people so we didn't get to play as well as we could of, as a team we all did our jobs, all did what we could," said Joe Dvorak, a 19-year-old freshman studies in war and peace major from Desoto, Kan.

This game was a learning experience.

"We played OK but we didn't practice enough, we are just a pretty young team, everybody has some experience playing speedball but not playing together," said Rex Wall, a 19-year-old freshman criminal justice major from Barnstable, Mass.

The team has to drive three hours to practice, and so can't practice

very often.

The new fields on Payne Mountain will allow the team to practice more frequently. The team hopes to become an official team representing Norwich.

"We had a cold reality check this last game but where there's a reality check there's a lesson," LaBello said. "I think a lot of teams will be surprised. We did surprise them (in) this event."