Ohio farm making its mark as paintball facility

HAMILTON, Ohio -- Having taught two teen-age boys to drive and lived through clothes-shopping with 'tween daughters, I'm not a gal who scares easily. But shooting guns for pleasure? That's one frightening activity I've always steered clear of.

Which explains why, instead of running around with my teammates in the middle of a cornfield studded with giant wooden spools at southwestern Ohio's Paintball Country, one of the largest such facilities in the region, I'm holed up inside the empty semi-trailer our "speedball" game started in, too terrified to move.

On either side of me, players of all ages -- some covered in full camouflage, others in T-shirts and tattoos -- are charging through the doors toward the opposite side of the field. This is the first time I've ever held a gun, so I can barely muster the courage to open my eyes or even run Rambo-style between the bunkers; to move would guarantee me getting hit by one of the gelatin-skinned paint capsules whizzing 300 feet per second past my head.

Then I remember: even kids -- including mine -- play paintball.

So I force myself out the door, raise the semi-automatic paintball marker, pull the barrel plug off and start shooting. Once the initial panic wears off, it's fun. At least until a ball of orange paint goes splat on my face mask and referee Micah Nuss calls me out.

I may be new to the sport, but paintball has never been hotter in the United States, with 5.5 million people playing at least one game in 2007, and 2.3 million playing eight or more, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturer's Association.

And Bob Niederman, a third-generation farmer who started Paintball Country in 1999 as a way to hold onto the 210-acre farm his paternal grandfather Raymond purchased in 1948, is more than happy to oblige. Players here have their choice of six speedball courses -- treeless fields filled with bunkers crafted out of wooden spools and crates, corrugated sewer piping and inflatable obstacles -- along with two wooded areas totaling 40 acres for military-type play.

Over a weekend, anywhere from 100 to more than 150 paintball enthusiasts make the drive deep into the countryside to play on the farm, most of which is still used to raise Holstein steer for freezer beef and to grow corn, soybean, hay and pumpkins. The facility (Liberty Township's last full-time working farm) also welcomes groups during the week by appointment; the day I was there, a local pizza company was using paintball to work on its team-building skills.

Following the national trend, most of Paintball Country's players are male. And while the farm draws plenty of teen-agers and 20-somethings, a sizable number are way past the average playing age of 25 -- no doubt because the make-believe battles allow men of a certain age to feel like kids again.

"The 40-plus crowds are probably laughing the loudest," says Bob's wife, Bethann, who when she's not attending to their five children helps man the pro shop where participants can buy everything from jerseys to guns to bags of White Box and Marbalizer paintballs.

When they're not moaning, that is.

While it's possible to take an eye out with reckless playing (that's why face masks and goggles are required), Bob Niederman estimates that 80 percent of the game's injuries befall older players trying to keep up with the fast-moving, often highly competitive play: sore muscles and twisted ankles caused by all the running and dodging.

Despite today's large number of players, Paintball Country got off to a pretty slow start; the first season saw so few paintballers that the Niederman children had to suit up along with paying customers to allow for games. In fact, Niederman, 42, had never played the game when he decided to take a chance on the business.

Even with a degree in agricultural economics from Ohio State University, he said it was getting increasingly difficult to make a living at traditional production agriculture. To keep his family on the land it loved, he'd have to develop an additional source of income.

Consider it Farm Aid, only with paintballs instead of rock bands and a $10,000 investment for insurance and equipment.

Actually, it wasn't such a far-fetched idea, as paintball has its roots in agriculture. In the 1950s, Niederman notes, cattle herders marked their cattle with paint pellets. It wasn't until three decades later that the first paintball game was played in New Hampshire in 1981.

Those first contests, played with oil-based paintballs shot from guns with a limited number of rounds, were very different from what you'll find at the Niederman farm. Modern players use semi-automatic, propellant-driven guns that not only fire with fairly good accuracy and speed (190 mph) but hold dozens of paintballs, which are now made with a vegetable-based oil paint that washes away with the morning dew. An old school bus ferries would-be warriors to the woods.

Depending on where it's played and the skill of the players, a paintball game can last anywhere from a few minutes to more than an hour. Whatever your level, though, all players must follow three rules or risk being yanked to the sidelines: Keep your mask on until you're outside the netted area, don't shoot within 10 feet of a player and make sure your barrel plug is in when the masks are off.

The hardest part for most first-timers, says Niederman, is waiting for that first hit because you just don't know what to expect -- and the paintballs are flying pretty darn fast.

If you wear loose-fitting clothes with long sleeves and long pants and some type of bandana to protect your neck, he says, you shouldn't feel much more than a sting.

And don't worry about getting completely splattered with paint. Players are eliminated after the first hit, so unless a renegade opponent overshoots, it's unlikely you'll have much more than a splotch here or there on your body. Instead, count on sweating.

Despite greater exposure and growing public acceptance, the image still exists that paintball players are "future terrorists," says Niederman. But everybody, he notes, plays paintball: doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers.

"It's good, clean fun."

(Gretchen McKay can be reached at gmckay(at)post-gazette.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)