The ISU Paintball Club’s unique members, fun ways and competitive nature goes beyond the success it had at this year’s National Collegiate Paintball Championships.

“It’s a bunch of unique people — all different majors, different walks of life — who just get together because we managed to find a sport like paintball, and we love hanging out and playing the sport,” said ISU Paintball Club coach and alum John Bartholomew.

The sport they love to play is a five-on-five contest on a 120-by-150 foot field where each team’s goal is to shoot and eliminate the opposing team’s players and capture their flag. Each game is five minutes long, and tournaments are set up as a “race to two,” meaning the teams play a best-of-three series.

“The style we play is called speedball. It’s where we play with the inflatable bunkers,” said Max Von Lehe, junior in marketing. “It’s close ranged, and it’s really a fast paced game.”

The game will end when the five-minute mark has been reached and one team shoots out all the opposing players or if one team hangs a flag on the opposing team’s start gate. If the time limit is reached and there are still people on the field for both teams, it becomes a null point.

ISU Paintball Club vice president Joe Bauer said the club isn’t as “die hard” as other teams could be, meaning the members take paintball seriously but they also like to have fun with it.

“It’s all fun and games until 10 seconds before that game starts, and you’re in the zone and you’re in serious mode,” Bartholomew said. “When that point is over, you’re back to relaxing and having fun.”

With the mixture of fun and competitiveness this past year, the club went to the National Collegiate Paintball Championships on April 12 and 13 in Lakeland, Fla.

Iowa State went 7-4 and won three of its four matches in the national prelims, which placed it in first in its bracket. On the second day of play, the club lost to Kent State in the second round, 2-1. Iowa State finished in 18th place out of 50 teams with a record of 8-6 at the paintball nationals.

“Nationals was a success for us,” Bauer said. “We got 18th out of 50 colleges, which was a large improvement from our past performances at nationals.”

The ISU Paintball Club’s season is now winding down as they only have a couple events with ISU fraternities, as well other school clubs, left this year. Even though the paintball season is coming to a close, the members have their sights already set on next year.

“We’d definitely like to see a cool new class of freshmen and sophomores come out in the fall and just really step up our performance throughout the season and eventually maybe finish higher than 18th at nationals like we did this year,” Bartholomew said. “Next year, we’ll be shooting to finish above 15th.”