Ron Kilbourne crept slowly through the woods, careful not to alert the men who were hunting him.

He looked up at the flag he was supposed to snag, but before he could reach it – SPLAT – he was hit.

“It doesn’t hurt because the adrenaline is running,” he said. “I got shot, and thought ‘this is cool!’ I got hooked and never stopped.”

Kilbourne was in his mid-20s when he got his first sting from a paintball game, back when the sport was called “war games.”

CLICK HERE for a in-depth multimedia interactive with all you need to know about paintball and the upcoming event in Huntington Beach.

Now, about 25 years later, the extreme sport claims nearly 10 million participants worldwide, and this weekend it’s coming to the sand in Huntington Beach. It’s the sixth year the National Professional Paintball League has stopped here on its five-city tour for the Super 7 World Series of Paintball.

Kilbourne – a crew leader for Huntington Beach’s parks department by weekday, paintball warrior by weekend – will be one of about 1,500 paintball players coming from as far as Australia and Japan to compete for $100,000 in prize money.

Up to 75,000 spectators are expected to come down starting Friday to the south side of the pier to watch the intense seven-minute battles, where players creep around an obstacle course and try not to get nailed.

The beach is a rare setting for a paintball tournament, and even though carpet covers the course, the sand below it makes running more challenging.

“We’re on the beach, it’s probably the best venue I’ve ever been to,” he said. “The crowd it generates, the weather, the atmosphere… what else can you ask?”

Through the decades, Kilbourne, now in his 50s, has had to adapt to the changing ways of the game.

“It was more like chess, about strategy,” said Kilbourne, who also coaches a number of teams that will be playing in the tournament. “Now it’s like speed checkers. It’s not a shooting game, it’s a running game.”

You had better be fast - considering the guns blast out 25 balls per second.

One aspect of the game hasn’t changed.

“I might come home with welts,” Kilbourne said. “But I get to give someone else welts, too.”

Check back at ocregister.com/beaches on Friday for video of the event.

- Laylan

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Beach culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.