Caught in a crossfire of color

I crouched behind a paint-splattered bunker, peering at a camouflage-clad form inching around the edge of a massive tree about 40 feet away. Whipping up my rifle, I squeezed off a few wild shots, groaning as they ricocheted harmlessly off the ground far from my quarry.

The enemy had much better aim, sending me ducking for cover as his gunshots whizzed by my ear.

Somewhere in the brush to my right, my son whooped in triumph. A young man in his 20s rose from his nearby hiding place, raising his rifle high to signify he'd just been shot — by an

11-year-old, first-time paintballer.

Fifteen minutes later the battle ended, and we trooped through the woods back to the parking lot of West-Side Paintball, in the Machias area near Lake Stevens. Thousands of colorful, spent paintballs, their covers shattered like eggshells, coated the leaves underfoot.

As I pondered the wisdom of placing a gun and ammunition in the hands of a fifth-grader, two of my teammates — a family therapist and a high-school teacher — reassured me. Paintball is not about violence and aggression, they explained. It's about honor, honesty, teamwork and pure fun.

"There's more sportsmanship out here, in the way people treat each other, than in any other sport I've ever played — even baseball," said Camano Island therapist Rick Kenna, 55. "I'm actually thinking of putting together a program to bring 12- to 15-year-old boys with behavior problems out here to basically teach them positive testosterone, a way to express that in a positive way."

Many paintball fields have come and gone in Snohomish County since paintball emerged in the 1980s. Today, the county has four paintball fields, attracting a clientele dominated by young men.

Hard-core paintballers own their own helmets and paintball rifles, which come in semiautomatic and automatic models. Others rent equipment at the fields, which charge $25 to $35 for gear, 100 to 200 paintballs and a full day of gaming.

Additional paintballs — waxy, marble-size projectiles filled with oily, washable liquids of varying hues — cost extra.

I picked West-Side Paintball for our recent foray because I'd heard it was good for beginners — a well-supervised field with strict rules for player conduct and safety. Some players who favor a more aggressive style of paintball spurn West-Side because it limits players to 200 rounds of ammunition per game.

Steve Saunders, who launched West-Side in 1984 at a different field in the Smokey Point area, said he created that rule to ensure that players with fancy automatic guns and a huge supply of paintballs can't overwhelm other combatants simply by spraying the field with an endless, rapid stream of fire.

Players instead must rely on skill, strategy and quick reflexes as they play Capture the Flag on West-Side's 3-½-acre main field, a section of woods filled with trees, large stumps and scores of bunkers and barricades fashioned from downed branches.

When we arrived at the field, I was slightly unnerved by the military atmosphere — especially the dozens of young men, nearly all in fatigues or other camouflage-pattern clothing, with rifles in hand.

But Paul Humphries, who is taking over the field from Saunders, put us at ease. He fitted us with protective goggle-helmets, filled our gun hoppers with purple-and-white paintballs and assigned veteran player Alan Ottini to take care of us as we headed into the woods with our team.

The official goal was to steal the other team's flag and bring it back to our own headquarters before they accomplished the same deed. Any player hit by a paintball must leave the field, unless the ball bounces off without breaking.

My personal goal, however, was simpler: Don't get shot.

Thanks to Ottini, a high-school business teacher, that first round was my best. With a lot of shouting and dodging between barricades, he kept me and my son, Tommy, alert to the location of enemy snipers. We spent most of the game hunkered down in one corner of the field, firing around the edge of trees and bunkers, until someone on our team rang a bell, signaling our victory.

The closest I came to hitting anybody was when I accidentally shot at Ottini.

Paintball can be dangerous if players don't wear proper gear, especially goggles to protect their eyes. Some fields, including West-Side, require players to yell "surrender" if they surprise an opponent at close range, rather than fire a point-blank shot, because the .68-caliber balls can break the skin.

My second round lasted only 10 minutes. Hiding behind a tree, staring at a spot where I thought an enemy player was secreted, I yelped an undignified "Ow!" when a paintball stung my behind. Then as I stepped out, fumbling to insert a neon-yellow plug into my rifle to signal my defeat, my original prey nailed me in the neck, smearing a mass of greasy white goo and pellet fragments into my hair.

Tommy lasted much longer, helping an adult teammate thwart an attack on our flag. But as they charged after two opposing players, they ran into an ambush. Tommy went down in a blitz of shots.

My last round was dismal. I had barely left our flag when two figures appeared out of nowhere and zinged me on the upper arm. Game over. Again, Tommy held his own, making his second "kill" of the day before the yellow team won.

"It was kind of freaky," he said. "Even though you couldn't get hurt, when you are dodging all those bullets your adrenaline goes really fast. It was like being in a war zone."

The next day, I discovered two large bruises, one with a tiny red welt, on my bottom and arm. Tommy, who had worn a winter coat, had only one small bruise. He didn't care about our bruises.

"Doing paintball is one of the funnest things I've ever done," he said. "When can we go again?"

Diane Brooks: 425-745-7802 or dbrooks@seattletimes.com.