Even though faster paced tournament paintball on smaller, open concept fields didn’t gain popularity and become the dominant form of paintball towards the late 90s, the initial concept of “Speedball” paintball was created almost a decade earlier. Developed by the founding SC Village ownership, speedball first debuted at SC Village in 1989 and was the paintball industry’s first look at what would ultimately usher in a totally new era for the sport.
The first speedball exhibition held at SC Village took place on a relatively small field that featured only a handful of bunkers to use as cover, with the idea being that the focus would be on movement and creating excitement rather than hiding in the woods trying to stealthily eliminate the other team. At the center of the speedball field were two hand-press horns that served as the scoring system. The objective was for players to make their way to the middle of the field and press the horns (which would make a sound) without getting hit by the other team. Each time the horn was pressed, points were earned for your team.
By placing the scoring system in the middle of the field, the SC Village team knew that all of the action would be directed towards the center, making speedball the first truly spectator friendly version of competitive paintball. Other tournament paintball leaders would expand upon this initial concept through cumulative group effort, the future of paintball competitions was continuously shaped into different forms.
As for SC Village, the creation of speedball eventually led the team to develop the first-ever tournament paintball training facility in the world, the SC Arenas, which are still active and part of the SC Village paintball family to this day.
