When current president and captain of the Oswego State club paintball team Erik Pedersen was looking for colleges to attend, Oswego was one that stuck out to him. Pedersen knew about Oswego’s paintball program because his sister attended the school and had friends on the team.

“I was really big into paintball, so I did some research before I even got accepted into [Oswego State],” Pedersen said. “When I got accepted and finally was a freshman here, I immediately went to the paintball club.”

The same goes for vice president and treasurer Hunter Sutherland, who started playing paintball seriously during ninth grade. Sutherland began researching schools in New York that offered paintball and he soon found himself on the shores of Lake Ontario.

Both players went through tryouts as freshmen, made the team and have stuck with the club ever since.

Oswego’s club paintball team, Oswego Rush, is a member of the National Collegiate Paintball Association (NCPA).

“SA [Student Association] allocates a couple thousand [dollars] for the year and we spend that on tournaments, the cost of paint, traveling and hotels,” Sutherland said. The team also uses that money for the open-play events that the club puts on for the students on campus.

With no paintball field on campus, the team has to find other areas around New York to both practice and have events.

“The season is split up throughout the school year,” Sutherland said. “We only practice near [the events] too. There are two events in the fall and two in the spring.”

Most of the locations where they have games are in upstate New York, but also in neighboring states like New Jersey and Massachusetts.

NCPA only allows teams to have seven players play during the game, but the team brings extra players that are used as “staff” to help in anyway possible for the participating players on game day.

“Events are held on Saturdays and we go down the night before, play in the morning and then leave,” Sutherland said.

Sutherland mentioned that one of the nearby paintball facilities has closed, creating difficulties for the team to meet up for practice.

“In Syracuse we used to have a field where we could have events on so we could practice there more often, but this year they closed,” Sutherland said.

Pedersen said that they still have a local park to practice at.

“Typically we practice at AAA [Paintball Park] in Constantia,” Pedersen said. “However, they close in November.”

“If we wanted to practice right now, we would have to go to Rochester at NVP [Paintball],” Pedersen said. “[They’re] the sister branch of the NVP in Syracuse, so they’re both run through the same company, we already have some connections, so they help us out.”

In college paintball, there are two divisions, Class A and Class AA. Pedersen said that the only difference between the two is the size of the school and the funding that they receive. Oswego Rush plays in Class AA.

Pedersen and Sutherland said that people are surprised to hear that they play paintball competitively.

“[Paintball] is not that popular,” Sutherland said. “Some people mis-hear me and hear ping pong. They get thrown off by paintball and don’t realize that it’s a big thing.”

Pederson mentioned a few different variations of paintball, like speed-ball, air-ball and hyper-ball, for instance.

“Typically when people talk about paintball, they don’t understand that there are multiple types of paintball,” Pedersen said. “There’s so many different types of variations of paintball that no one knows about.”

However, both said that the number of people enrolling at Oswego State is consistently high.

“I was worried before this season that we wouldn’t be able to fill out the roster,” Sutherland said. “But we actually had enough come out that actually had experience and it was good.”

Pedersen was surprised with the number of students that showed interest at the annual Involvement Fair, which they say is a great opportunity to get involved.

“We filled up like six or seven sheets of names of people who were interested,” he said. “It was very surprising. We have a lot of people contact us.”

Most of the students that show up are freshmen, like Sutherland and Pedersen were, who have played and are interested in continuing the sport in college.

A big reason that the club draws a lot of attention is their national ranking and prestige.

“Last year and the year before that we came in 2nd in the nation out of 52 other colleges at nationals,” Pedersen said. “Last year we were tied for first in the nation the whole season long with Texas A&M and Liberty University. It’s crazy that we have such a big name in paintball, considering we’re such a small school.”

Despite their consistent high achievement, both players continue to look for new people to join and continue the winning tradition of the team.

“If you know a younger kid that is interested in playing and wants to keep playing, that’s the type of person that you say ‘Hey, you should look at Oswego,’” Sutherland said.