Alan Prince
SAN DIEGO (TNA)—It sounds amazing, but groupies aren't always after major league players or rockers. In fact, the little-known sport of professional paintball has a groupie subculture of its own.
Sometimes the pursuit is innocent: young women hoping to score an autograph or maybe a jersey and a picture with their favorite player.
Other times, they want a DNA sample. One infamous series of pictures circling around the Internet depicts a major tournament sponsor's flagship team penetrating their spokesmodels with the barrels of their custom guns, among other things.
Take the case of “Phil Holz,”* a professional paintball player who asked that his real name not be used for fear of losing his sponsorship. Between 2002 and 2004, Holz lived near San Diego State University in a flophouse known as the “Paintball House,” because its tenants included some of the best paintball players in the world.
"I've seen some weird things happen,” Holz said of his tenure at the house, which was known for its legendary parties. “Girls would flock to the house from the dorms and sororities because we were different. They must have thought, 'These aren't just a bunch of frat guys, they're professional athletes.’"
According to Holz, many girls in the dorms had posters and magazines of their favorite player on the wall, adding, “Their favorite player, of course, was whichever of us they were fucking.”
"We used the phrase ‘wear it’ to describe how these women wore their shame right alongside our semen," he said. “Ironically enough, many of them literally began wearing our T-shirts and clothes around campus. Wear it."
Holz claims he once watched three teammates take a girl into a closet converted into a room, trying to start up a gang bang. "At first, she was hesitant,” he said. “Then Larry started asking her, 'When are you ever going to get a chance to fuck three hot dudes like us again?' "She realized he was right, and got right to work."
Another time, Holz says two players named “Paul” and “Andrew” took a girl to the room of a paintballer named “Jack” in order to tag-team her.
"We all gathered around outside to watch, but before long we were participating. We had her yelling, ‘I love Team Fun*!’ and ‘Fuck me Beastman, fuck me!’ (Beastman is the nickname of one of our teammates."
"The whole team was watching her and she loved it. No one really knows about paintball or who we are, so there aren't any paparazzi or anything prying into our personal life."
Kat Secor is a young woman who plays paintball at a competitive level and has witnessed the groupie mentality up close.
She says that groupies are girls looking for attention in the wrong ways in order to satisfy their need to feel important, and she is quick to add that “paintball players love that attention because they'll take what they can get."
Why do women subject themselves to such debasement by sports figures they adore? According to Jay Granat, a New York psychotherapist who works with professional athletes, it’s partly about the paintball players’ fame, money and stature, but also intangibles.
"These athletes have mastered a craft which is quite charming, captivating and appealing to many women," he said.
Granat doesn't believe there's a specific type of woman who becomes a groupie, but believes that all groupies share a common mentality.
"There's some bragging rights, perhaps. It's a conquest to conquer the athlete, in addition to the notoriety. Of course a lot of these men are wealthy stars," he said.
That explanation makes sense for women in pursuit of real professional athletes like baseball and football players, but why paintball players specifically, the best of whom are lucky to take home a teacher's salary? Do they have some special charm? Are there pheromones in those paintballs?
Jack Lumber, one of the world's top five professional paintball players, has his own theory. "I would like to think [groupies like me] because I'm a cool guy and a good looking fella, but they're definitely more interested after we win a tournament," he said.
I've definitely been like, ‘Oh whoops, open paintball magazine, what's this with a picture of me in it?’" he admitted. "That helps a little bit."
Granat believes some groupies longed to be accepted into a culture they're obsessed with; being backstage and on the bench makes groupies feel like "a kind of celebrity."
"I had one woman who was quite interested in the New York Knicks," Granat said, laughing. "She was a big basketball fan, she loved the sport."
Lumber says some women feel the same about paintball, such as the lady his teammates met in the lobby of a Miami hotel during a tournament.
"My teammates, Richard and Rick met some ‘scally’ downstairs and brought her up to the room where we drew our game plans on her naked body," he reminisced. "Then a couple of the guys fucked her."
Afterward, the paintball-loving lady went outside to smoke a cigarette, completely naked except for Richard's jersey, where she was promptly removed from the premises.
“She was obviously not the type of person they wanted in the hotel, so they threw her out," he surmised. "She left all of her stuff upstairs in our room: her purse, her money—there was only $7, ID, wallet, everything. Nobody ever saw her again. She was walking the streets of Miami naked except for Richard's jersey and our game plans."
Some of these women want to be a groupie in the fullest sense of the word, such as the woman Lumber met at a tournament in Huntington Beach, Calif., who accepted his invitation to visit the Paintball House in San Diego.
Before long she was sitting completely naked in a player’s room asking, "Which one of you guys is gonna fuck me?" Lumber says he didn't fuck her, because she wasn't that good looking, but another guy did in front of everyone else. “There were seven of us in there and she just kept yelling, 'Come on, everybody fuck me!'" he said.
Who says dreams don't come true?
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*All names have been changed to protect identities.