The MLPB’s Tampa Bay Open 26 has concluded, marking a historic milestone as, for the first time, professional paintball was held inside an NFL stadium. In this case, Raymond James Stadium. The MLPB/NXL delivered an exceptional level of production throughout the event.

What I think is particularly noteworthy is that this was all accomplished in significantly less time than the MLPB has typically allotted for venue preparation. Under normal circumstances, they will have a full week dedicated to setting up the event. However, on this occasion, the team had only 2–3 days to complete all preparations, both inside and outside the stadium! And boy did they deliver. What an outstanding achievement and effort by all those involved. involved.

When I took on the role of coach for the Jungle Cats, I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. The jump from semi pro to pro is often misrepresented and misunderstood. It isn’t a step but rather a large leap off a cliff. At this event, the Atlanta Jungle Cats got their first real taste of that drop. Our record—one win and three losses—certainly didn’t turn any heads on paper… but if you’re looking at this team through my lens, a coaching lens, the story is a lot more interesting than the standings suggest. And that’s what I want to do with this post… the hype is gone and reality has set in. I want to talk about how we should view this first event performance and the mentality behind it.

First, a little background. The Cats had a few things going for them headed into this season. They are a good example of a modern “pipeline team” in paintball. They started together in 2024 in Division 2 (Under the moniker BR Factory) with the following finishes and winning the series title:

Las Vegas Major – 2nd place

• Lone Star Major – 3rd place
• Mid Atlantic Major – 2nd place
• Windy City Major – 3rd place
• World Cup – 1st place

So, they learned what it takes to win at that level. No other team had that kind of consistency in the division that season.

They would enter the semi pro division in 2025 and almost mimic their D2 run winning the series title once again:

• Tampa Bay Open – 2nd place
• Atlantic City Open – 2nd place
• Midwest Open – 1st place
• Lonestar Open – 2nd place
• World Cup – 5th

They would also go on to win the Summit award for Divisional Team of the Year as well as the Pro spot for the 2026 season.

Like I was saying, they are a good example of what I call a “pipeline” team. What I mean by “pipeline” team is they started in the lower divisions, developed and drew upon local talent, built up their chemistry and sponsorships, stayed in their respective division winning events, and ultimately earned their way into the pro league.

Now, we are nowhere near a legacy powerhouse team like San Diego Dynasty or Edmonton Impact. And whereas we have some things in common with PBFit, we are far from that organization’s level of success and capabilities. This season is going to be a struggle/fight as this first event showed. So many opportunities were missed during our preliminary matches that could have significantly changed the outcome of a point or even a match. In the lower divisions, you can get away with a mistake here and a mistake there. In the pro division, it is often one mistake that costs you. And we had several.

But I believe these guys understand that. They thought they understood this prior to the event. They certainly understand it now. What they did before to be successful in the lower divisions will simply not cut it now. They recognize they must work even HARDER. Much harder than what it took to climb the ranks. The devil is in the details as they say and the details are what win you points.

We met our 5 goals for this event, albeit one just barely.

• Win a point
• Win two points back to back
• Win a match
• Don’t get last
• Get out of the 5th tier

VS The Royal City Seadogs

This first win matters more than it looks. What I need my guys to understand is that a 3–2 win over the Royal City Seadogs is more than just a check in the win column, it’s proof of concept.

In a first pro event, teams typically struggle with:

• tempo
• communication under pressure
• closing points

We struggled with all of these. BUT… we didn’t just compete, we closed a tight match.

This showed me a few things..

• they trust the system
• they didn’t panic late in points
• our core group has the chemistry necessary to win
• they aren’t scared

And look, for a rookie squad, that’s a strong foundation we can build from. Personally, I feel this should have been a 4-1 game but again, small mistakes cost us.

ZEN NOTE: During the 5th point of this match, Baldwin clearly gets hit in the pack when he is in the snake 50. Camera shows it plain as day.

VS Edmonton Impact

We knew this was going to be a tough match. It was the David versus Goliath lived out in real time except that Goliath won the day decisively. It isn’t that the 5-1 loss was surprising but it was exactly what we needed. Impact is one of the most disciplined and talented teams in the league. They put on a clinic regarding survivability, communication, and teamwork. They’re a team that doesn’t beat you with brute force, or chaos, or even fancy tricks. They beat you with structure, game planning, in game adaptation, lane control, and then punish you when you make a mistake.

We received a reality check here. They didn’t outplay us, they outclassed us. You never really truly understand how many mistakes you are making out there until a team like Impact punishes you for all of them. And this match exposed us on several fronts. From zone control, timing, hesitation/slow processing, and job transitions. But we don’t need to look at it as an overall failure. Rather, we need to look at it as data. This is film we can build from. Lots of lessons in this one.

Again, I feel there was a point or two that should have played out differently had we understood the situation or just not lost a first engagement. For example, the second point of the match, I feel we should have created more pressure early snake side with Impact’s set up. But then losing two bodies behind our snake, makes him the island, so he should have stayed alive, instead of running down for a trade in a down body situation.

VS CK Hurricanes and TonTons

I think these two matches were the most telling. Not to take anything away from these two teams, but they aren’t unbeatable. These were the two matches where we had an opportunity to show and prove we belong in this division right now, not eventually. These were both winnable games. Instead, we let certain points slip away early, we didn’t recover well from playing down or from a deficit, and of course, slip ups with mid game processing, comms, and decision making.

That was the real difference here. When you add those things up, it shows the difference between competing and controlling. We weren’t controlling certain factors during each of the matches and ended up chasing.

Key elements during the Hurricane match cost us. In the first point, we bounce my friend Daniel Camp on break. My boy Ronnie beats Nic to snake by a mile. If he gets on the wire sooner, he may have caught Nic on his wide crawl. If Joey was on wire when Ronnie runs Nic down, we probably get Daniel too. Snake side is now blown open and we turn the field. The fourth point was another one that comes to mind from this match. My friend Nic Ripple pulls off a good one. It’s a 2 on 1, Joey yells “Home!” so Davis looks inside for him but Nic had already run from home to snake and shoots Davis. Had we contained him in home, we win this point. Joey can’t get a straight ball and Nic takes the point away from us.

During the TonTons game, a point that comes to mind is the 5th point of the match. It’s tied 2-2. We shoot the snake corner on the break making it a 54… then we give them one back. 44 but they have two at home. Our game plan when in this scenario is to pinch those two hard and we usually get one. If you slow this one down on youtube, we shoot the snake side home in the elbow plain as day… but I guess it didn’t leave paint and ref calls him clean. Then we let them spread wide. We lose Joey but bounce 95 in the dorito shortly after… we also had an opportunity to shoot a solid A+ bounce shot on dorito but we don’t do it because, well, we forgot about it.

Summation/Key Takeaways

We don’t necessarily have a talent issue. We have a pro experience issue and it showed. Duh. Clarity and situational awareness must improve.

After the last prelim match against TonTons, I had a few things I wanted the guys to understand. Managing expectations moving forward was priority #1. I didn’t talk to them about wins and losses. Instead, we talked about what we had just experienced and why. We talked about pace and tempo. The guys now understand that pro paintball is way faster but more importantly, it is way more decisive! The “hesitation window” from semi pro is gone. Every indecision or delay cost us field position, bodies, and points.

Good pro teams don’t just win points. They manage them. Each and every one. We have to recognize when to brake and when to step on the gas, when to lock and when to take ground and increase pressure. When to close and how.

I feel this was a good first event. We won a match, we got exposed by an elite team, and we recognize now how big the gap is. We never truly got blown out… we weren’t “lost” during the matches… we are right on the edge of “belonging”. This is a good place to be.

We need cleaner breakouts, faster secondaries. We need to turn those 5-2 matches into coin flips, the 6-2 into real fights. We came into Tampa thinking we were ready. Now we know what “ready” actually looks like. If we do this right, this event won’t be remembered as a rough debut… it will be remembered as the moment we stopped being a good semi pro team and started figuring out how to become a real pro one. We’ve seen the standard. Now we need to spend the rest of the season setting it.

Be water my friends…