Quesnel paintball association wants to hold massive event inside hockey arena before it's demolished
Players would have to fight to get inside the arena before moving on to other targets
A paintball group in Quesnel, B.C. is hoping to make a mess of a local hockey arena before it's demolished.
"It's huge, and [has] a lot of areas that a person can hide and have fun in and set booby traps," explained Northern Strike Paintball Association president Peter Bond.
The arena is scheduled to be destroyed this April and Bond sees it as a rare opportunity to hold a campaign in a large indoor setting without having to clean up afterwards.
"We want to be the last ones in there," he said.
Breach the arena campaign
Bond said the vision is to run a scenario campaign — a game with objectives beyond simply shooting other players.
"What would happen is we'd get teams ... and their first objective would be to try and access the building against a certain number of people that are inside, trying to protect," he said.
"Once they are able to breach into the building then they can try to take off and do some of the other objectives they have planned."
The idea came from his organization's members watching videos of campaigns run by other paintball groups.
"Everybody was always watching these shows on TV and saying 'oh, we would do that different,' or 'we would be better at that,' so I thought 'you know what? Let's go ahead and do that.'"
City supportive, but scheduling a potential issue
Jeff Norburn, the city's general manager of community services, said Quesnel is supportive of the idea, but needs to make sure it won't interfere with other plans.
He said the lacrosse association is also hoping to hold a tournament before the rink is demolished, and other groups need to move their equipment out.
"Obviously we can't have a paintball tournament before that," he said.
Norburn said city staff and the contractor in charge of the demolition are going over the schedule to see if Bond's paintball event can be squeezed in.
"Everybody likes the idea, it's just we have to take a look at the schedule."
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