COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: Personnel Crunch
Sports: America's Passion for Paintball
Recruiters seek soldiers on a hot sport's battlefields.
Andrew Romano, Newsweek
March 19, 2007
Sgt.
Cory Elder smiled as he surveyed the field of battle. There were
soldiers everywhere—300 camouflaged combatants gripping machine
guns and barking into walkie-talkies. There were smoke grenades. There
were Humvees. There was even an airplane. But despite all the
accoutrements, this was hardly Fallujah, and these troops—in
Coram, N.Y., last Sunday to play a paintball game called Behind Enemy
Lines—were only weekend warriors. For now, that is. Hoping to
convert today's wanna-bes into tomorrow's cadets, Elder, an Army
recruiter, had stocked an "Army of One" tent with key chains, coffee
mugs, footballs, baseball caps, T shirts and customized dog tags. Soon,
a bunch of teenage boys were grasping for the prizes—and giving
recruiters their names, numbers and e-mails in return. "This is our
target audience," says Elder. "It's a perfect match."
Though paintball won't replace bonuses or benefits as a top recruiting
tool anytime soon, the fast-growing sport has emerged in recent months
as a promising source of fresh fighters at a time when the armed forces
are stretched thin. Keenly aware that paintball's 10.4 million
participants make it more popular among Americans than baseball,
surfing or snowboarding, Elder, a player himself, began trolling Long
Island events for prospects late last year. After five "low-key" trips,
his unit has signed up two new troops and identified another 50 who
"seem interested." Recruiters in Minnesota, Pennsylvania, California,
Chicago and North Dakota have also scoped out paintball events.
Encouraged by such progress, the Army last month inked a $100,000 ad
deal with Paintball Sports magazine, offering up tanks, choppers
and—naturally—a huge Army recruiting booth for the
2,000-player Long Island Big Game in May. "We're watching Long Island
as a pilot program to see whether there's enough interest to take this
across the country," says Col. Donald Bartholomew of U.S. Army
Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, Ky.
While extreme sports are familiar fodder for recruiters—finding
soldiers for a draft-free war means meeting prospects "where they
already are," like NASCAR races, says Bartholomew—paintball may
offer a more direct path to potential troops. The combat vibe is key.
In a typical match, devotees shoot each other with spherical gelatin
capsules traveling at 200mph. Some paintballers join teams with names
like Commando Elite and crisscross the country to participate in
colossal, strategic re-enactments of, say, the Battle of Stalingrad. In
Coram, stonemason Seth Weiland (code name: "Tackleberry" ) arrived with
an arsenal of paintball-enabled rocket launchers, claymores and
explosive mines. Such enthusiasm is half the battle. "Where else can
you find young men who have a better-than- average idea of how to
conduct themselves in a firefight?" says Jason Elliott, a paintballer
from Melbourne, Fla.
Still, the military's interest has some enthusiasts worried. Although
paintball started (and thrives) in the woods, a newer form of play has
recently given the game a gloss that's more "American Gladiators" than
American grunts. Called "speedball," it boasts vivid jerseys, high-tech
"markers" that can cost $1,500 and indoor fields arrayed with colorful
inflatable bunkers. Speedball's athletic image has proven palatable to
parents, principals and programmers at ESPN2, which airs the National
Professional Paintball League championship series. When word of the
Army's interest hit the Web, speedballers fretted that any hint of
warmongering might stall the mainstream acceptance they crave. "The
general public assumes paintballers are playing 'war games'," wrote one
poster on PBNation.com, the Web's largest paintball forum. "Being
associated with the military is just one more small piece of negative
reinforcement. "
Paul Pertessis, for one, isn't perturbed. An 18-year-old employee of
the Coram facility, High Velocity Paintball, he plans to visit a few
colleges after graduating from high school in June. But that's just to
please mom. Pertessis has his heart set on the military—thanks in
part to Elder, who would often ask Pertessis about tweaks to his
paintball gun. "Every time, he'd tell me to take the military entrance
exam," says Pertessis. "So one day I thought, What's the harm?"
Pertessis scored well enough to qualify for an intelligence post. But
lately he's been dreaming of another gig: gunner on a Black Hawk
helicopter. "That'd be badass," he says. Mission accomplished.
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