The sign reads ROAD CLOSED on a gravel road south of Des Moines.

To the left, the orange tarping that serves as a barricade is peeled back to the edge of the sign. Peeled back just enough for cars to pass by.

We never slow down.

Jason Chrzan, an ISU paintball team captain and freshman in liberal arts and sciences, sits beside me in the back seat and ashes his cigarette out the window.

Chrzan tells me and the two others in the white Jeep that he moved the barricade.

Nothing stops these guys from playing paintball.

I’ve never played before.

Chrzan and Mike Ramsey, the other tournament team captain and junior in mechanical engineering (and owner of the Jeep) and Ivan Erickson, ISU paintball club president, told me I could come along for a Sunday morning practice.

The field is outside of Pleasantville, an hour south of Ames.

I am one of 26 ISU students to come down. The vehicles continue to turn in as I step out of ours.

Let me bring you up to speed as I wait for my gun’s air pressure tank to be filled.

Paintball began in the late `70s or early `80s, either along the West Coast or somewhere else in the United States, probably along the Eastern seaboard, depending on who you talk to.

If you follow Western theory, loggers used tree markers to make work easier. One day, a logger thought it was fun to shoot another logger with his marker.

A sport is born.

If you follow the Somewhere Else theory, guys wondered if “survival” in the woods (from enemies armed with something resembling the current day paintball guns) is a result of environment or instinct.

A sport is born.

Through good marketing and the X-treme sports movement of the mid-’90s, paintball became what it is today.

Last year, 18 teams competed at the collegiate nationals.

Paintball games started in forrests but moved to open fields with barricades strewn about. The latter is where Iowa State competed at nationals last year playing five man.

In five man, a flag is planted in the middle of the field. Other points are kept, but you want to hang the flag on the opponent’s starting arch opposite your own.

Games last five minutes. Feels like fifty.

“It’s legal crack,” Ramsey says.

There is also ten-man paintball, but we’re ready to play, so talk to Ramsey if you want more information.

Oh yeah. One more thing. Goggles are required at all times.

No flags planted today. We’re only here to practice.

Meaning the game is over when all opponents are covered in paint.

I watch the first game. ISU guys take on some locals who just finished filling tanks.

“In Five,” someone yells. “GogogoGo.”

Fired from a gun smaller than a rifle, a paintball, Ramsey says, is filled with animal fat, and holds its form with the same exterior used in Tylenol gel caps.

The guns sound horribly similar to actual rapid gun fire. I wonder, if hit, will it feel like the real stuff too?

Smoke billows out of the barrel when a ball is fired. It’s windy today. Harder to be accurate.

But when it does hit, animal fat splashes all over the black irrigation piping that is this course’s barricades.

Already, there are reds, greens, whites, blues and pinks everywhere. The field would make Jackson Pollock proud.

Guns fire in time with the smoke from the barrel’s end. Paint splatters. People run. People duck. People yell. Game is over.

My turn.

I’m asked what barricade I’d like to run to. “Back middle,” I say.

I’m 6’4″, 220, slow-moving. This back middle barricade is taller and wider than I am. And closest to me.

“In five … GogogoGo.”

I get off a few shots before cowering behind my safe haven. Balls hiss and then smack against the barricade with a thud, echoing softly.

I peer around. Get off two more shots. Splash. Blue paint smears my goggles.

I continue firing, but Ramsey — now a ref – says “You’re out bud.”

I walk to the sidelines and watch again.

The next time, I’m hit in the hand. Time after that, I slide behind a barricade closer to mid-field.

I crawl on my belly, take out a couple people from there, duck when a ball whizzes by my head, swear when more do and get hit in the leg.

Ramsey told me earlier it feels like a towel snap, but when I’m hit, it hurts enough to not want to play for at least five minutes.

I raise my hand and every time yell “I’m out,” suppressing a sniffle.

After my fifth game, my hands are numb. I swear they had a laser beam on my left pinkie.

Everyone else plays on, so I take out my notebook.

Yes, paintball is a game. But it is a game with a lot of war in it.

On the field, you can be passive and let them come to you (protect the Alamo), or aggressive, and go to them (attack the Alamo).

And after the games, guys boast about the number of “kills” they had (remember the Alamo).

Yet, paintball is not war.

When finished, neon green, pink and yellow plugs that look like a child’s toy are shoved into the barrel’s end.

Spectators, not innocent bystanders, watch the proceedings from a few feet away.

Most importantly, fired rounds don’t kill.

Chrzan is a Marine. He says the military has begun using paintball to train, but adds “No. It’s not war.”

This is good because it is my first time, and I was hit just above the eye.

“Killing a war-like image is one of the biggest things in paintball,” Chrzan says, which is why few games take place in the woods today.

I sit up front with Ramsey on the ride home.

“Did you like it?”

“Yeah,” I say.

I tell him about my pinkie.

He says many guys play without gloves their first time. That’s also the last.

I nod my head, and we fall silent.

I think back to the time I called Ramsey and asked him what I needed to bring for today.

“Some guys bring a nut cup,” he said.

A left pinkie isn’t a bad thing to have hurt.

Paul Kix is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Hubbard. Paul enjoys watching “Jeopardy!” and elderly Scottish actors.