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‘Super Dave’ The Weekend Warrior |
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Some years ago Dave McLellan took his son to play paintball. His son found it too intense, but McLellan loved it. “I’ve been going ever since,” he said. “The game has radically changed since then. We shot five balls per second and now it’s 20. It can be murder out there – you learn how to duck and run. You have to get in behind your bunker.”
McLellan thinks it may be the adrenalin rush of it that has him hooked. “You haven’t lived until you’re behind the bunker and hearing the paint hit and whiz past. It makes a lot of noise and it’s unnerving. It can strike terror into the heart. You use that to your advantage to bunker the other team while they’re cowering.”
Despite the warlike overtones, McLellan claims that paintball is just good clean fun for all ages and not unlike other team sports. He himself has never had any interest in the military and the other players he knows also “just want to have fun.” The game they play is called Speedball, which means that it is played on a field with bunkers to hide behind. Others play Bushball in the trees, “the same game in different surroundings,” in which players often wear fatigues and add WWII scenarios.
The game developed, according to McLellan, from a gun created for tagging wild animals. One day a few conservationists got together with the guns and started shooting each other and a new game was born. Twenty-five years later games in the US draw huge crowds and some of the leading players make large incomes.
“Now there are a dozen brands, levels and grades of paint and it makes a difference. Everything is electronic now – you just feather that trigger. When you get hit you know there’s another 20 behind that one,” he said, explaining that the paint is all biodegradable, like cooking oil, and that the referees make sure that the speed of the tube markers does not exceed 300 feet per second because “it gets too painful.”
McLellan, known as “Super Dave” on the field, is a back player who keeps the other team’s heads down so his team can move forward. He goes through two cases of paint in a day. “Angel Mike can take you out with one shot. He’s a one-baller. I come out and I just spray,” he said. “I whine and grovel a lot to get discounts on my paint!”
Games often take place on private property, including McLellan’s. The 140’ x 40’ field in his East Kelowna orchard has seen a lot of action. He also likes to play at Bushwacker Games at the north end of Westside Road in Vernon. He points to high insurance rates as a prohibitive factor for new commercial fields, but claims that no-one has ever been hurt beyond scraped knees since he has been playing. “You dress for it,” he said, “with hand protection, elbow, head and neck guards. You can even get underwear that’s padded. More people get hurt playing tennis!”
McLellan has had careers as a mechanic, a paramedic, a retail businessman and an orchardist. Nowadays his orchard is leased out while he works at Princess Auto, a job he is thoroughly enjoying. He doesn’t take himself too seriously and is having more fun in life than ever. “I’m a happy camper,” he said. “I have no stress at all.”
He is persuading his co-workers to try his favourite sport and happy that his wife Nancy, while not a player herself, is supportive. “She gets a kick out of me playing,” he said. “We set a game for 10:00 o’clock and get to the game at 12:00 (because of all the talking). She just shakes her head.”
He advises anyone whose life is “too comfortable and tame” to try it at least once, adding that speed and agility are not necessarily criteria for playing. He once taped up broken ribs to play because he wouldn’t miss a game for such a trifling reason.
McLellan intends to take up golf when he’s old. In the meantime he is becoming something of a legend in his chosen pastime. Last year he was sitting on the bench at the side of the field when he overheard a young player down the way whisper to his friend, “I’m pretty sure that’s Super Dave!”
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