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How to start up an airsoft team
Written by Tyler
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I have seen all types of ‘clubs’ and ‘teams’ start and then
fail in the first couple of days and within the first month. I
am going to attempt to give you some of my insight into making
an airsoft team work. I will be using my experience of
joining, little league baseball teams, soccer teams, truck and
car clubs, racing teams, starting a business and my current
membership to my airsoft team Quick Response Team – aka
QRT. Now before everyone gets all huffy and puffy about
what I am about to say, this is from my personal experience of
what I have seen work and not work. Other teams can and will
work in different ways, but this is how I have HELPED to
successfully start an airsoft team.
First thing, notice how I said “HELPED”. The reason that I say
that is even though I ‘technically’ started the team and got
the ball running. It was not me that ‘made’ the team what it
is. All I did was to set the initial guidelines and when we
had our first ‘meeting’.. I went over all of them with each
person and we discussed whether or not the guidelines I set
would work. If they didn’t work, we changed them. If we
couldn’t change them, we got rid of them. Remember the old
saying, ”There is no ‘I’ in TEAM..”?. Well that is true IN
EVERY ASPECT of the saying.
So what I am going to start out talking about is the ‘leader’
of the team. Yes, you have to have someone that ‘can’ take
charge of the team but is not ‘always in charge’ of the team.
You see, people are going to disagree. If nobody has a say in
the way a team operates, then the team WILL fail and it most
likely will fail quickly. QRT does not have a chain of
command persay. This is one of the very first things that we had
discussed when we formed the team. I came out and stated,
“Yes, I initially formed this team.. but it is NOT ‘MY’ team
by any means. I am NOT the captain or leader or Commanding
officer of this team.” I did this so that the other members
knew that I was not trying to ‘make’ them do anything a
certain way. My tactics and techniques may not be the way that
they are used to playing. So if I were to push the issue and
be like, “My way or the highway” then I wouldn’t be a part of
the infamous QRT.
Too many people think that there ‘has’ to be a leader or
captain of the team. Truth is yes, there will always be
someone that ends up taking more of a directors role on the
team and that is good. But as soon as that person claims to be
the ‘Commanding officer’ then you run into problems. Either
one, everyone that follows the ‘Commanding officer’ has
absolutely no leadership qualities and just follows because
they don’t know what else to do or two, people within the team
begin to disagree with the ‘Commanding officer’ and start to
plan a ‘coup d'état’. In case you don’t know what that is.. it
is an over throwing of a government. Or in this case an
airsoft team.
Another thing about ‘leaders’ or Commanding officers is that
if they just happened to ‘quit’ or move on.. where does that
leave all of his faithful subjects? Well, I’ll tell you where
it leaves them, standing on the side of the field with their
thumbs up their… well you get the picture. So first things
first, it is not always a good idea to have a Commanding
officer on an airsoft team. AT LEAST not at the beginning. As
time goes on and you gain more members, you can start
discussing team ranking and officers and so on and so forth.
But even then, it should be via TEAM VOTING. In other words..
one guy shouldn’t just stand up and say, ”Okay.. I’m team
leader commanding officer.. start doing what I say.” Because
I’ll tell you that if I were put into that situation, I would
tell the guy to pound sand and walk off the team.
Remember this simple phrase, ”How do you expect them to follow
you.. if they don’t respect you?”
A team is only as good as it’s worst player. Yes.. let me say
that again, A TEAM IS ONLY AS GOOD AS IT’S WORST PLAYER. Very
similar to the phrase, “A chain is only as strong as it’s
weakest link.” This is something that is addressed by QRT
EVERY SINGLE meeting and training session. Say for
instance you want to start an airsoft team and you are a
Former Army
Ranger. Well, yeah.. you have skills but what about your
teammates? If you allow people to just join your team and they
have no skills.. then it makes no difference on what you know.
When you get shot out, your team will only play as good as the
next best player.
QRT has VERY strict qualification levels. If you are not up
to par with what the team requires of you, you will not make
it onto the team. I’m not going to get into the specifics of
what we require but I will say that you may ‘think’ you are
the cream of the crop, but if you can’t ‘keep up’ with the
rest of the team, you will not make the cut.
This brings us to training. Quick Response Team trains
very frequently in between games. Why? Because we want to
learn new tactics, brush up on the ones we know and figure out
what went wrong at the last game. Every other training is a
classroom session. Again, I am not going to tell you what we
train on or discuss, but I’ll give you a general idea.
An airsoft team needs to be able to work with each other. They
need to know what each member is going to do without having to
ask or tell them. This is going to make the team that much
more effective in a fire fight. Just imagine all of the wasted
time you spend each game, by telling a teammate that he or she
needs to “Go that way around the hill” or “Hey.. who’s
watching our 6?”. Train together and you will fight together.
That is another strong point of what is going to keep a team
together. As I stated above, a team is only as good as it’s
worst player.
Test, how many of you have played with a group of people,
teammates or otherwise, that have been completely on a
different page then you? I have and it sucks. Okay, here is a
little story. QRT went out to a RAID game (Roughnecks
Airsoft Infantry Detachment). The first game.. we were teamed
up with a group of guys
(not
Roughecks) that we had never played with. When we
met up with them, we asked them what radio channel they were
on and they didn’t want to tell us. We told them that we
(which outnumbered them by 2 to 1) were on channel 3-3. We
told them that it would be best if they switched to our
channel so that we could communicate. They ‘reluctantly’ did
and we proceeded to ask them what their plan was. They told
us.. “Well we’re going to go over here and wait for them to
come up the trail and when they do, we are going to shoot
them.”. I asked, “I think we should stick together though,
because we are the first check point and we are going to have
the entire team (about 40 people) bearing down on us. They
responded with, “NO… we know what we’re doing”. So I asked,
“Okay.. what if they don’t come up that way? What if they
flank you? What if they get past you?”.. They said, ”Oh.. they
won’t”… I said, “What if they do?”... “They won’t” and walked
away.
So we went our way and proceeded to put together our battle
strategy AND contingency plan. After the game started, we
proceeded to give radio communication and inform the rest of
the USFOR of enemy location. We were told by our ‘other’
team.. “Okay fine… NOW KEEP THIS CHANNEL CLEAR.”. That was the
last we heard of them. So as the fight proceeds.. OPFOR was
coming up on checkpoint 1… FAST. A few of QRT fell back into
position to receive some serious incoming fire. But I had
noticed that the guys that had such a great position hadn’t
taken a shot. We had OPFOR EVERYWHERE and these 4 guys thought
they could take out everyone? Anyway, to make a long story
short, ‘their’ plan was completely ineffective. I am pretty
sure that they were taken out pretty quick considering that
OPFOR came out of the bush right where they were ‘suppose’ to
be. Either that or they ran away like a bunch of chickens.
So, what does that have to do with team work? Well, at the
time that checkpoint 1 was overrun, we still had a good amount
of our force, we just couldn’t hold the check point. We
had given current and accurate intel on OPFOR position to the
JOC and ultimately USFOR were able to recapture CP1. Even
though QRT was overrun, we worked as a team by relaying intel
to not only JOC but to each other which helped us to stay
alive a bit longer.
Staying alive longer has a lot to do with your equipment.
Realize that if you start an airsoft team with the “Only this
type of gun allowed” mentality then you are blocking yourself
from a lot of advancement. I am not going to get into the
‘types’ of team styles because everyone has their thing. What
I will say is that when you start a team, think of where you
want it to be. For instance, if you start a team that only
allows sniper rifles that shoot at 500+ FPS.. chances are that
you may not be playing a lot of games with other teams.
Especially if they have FPS limits. So the point of this
paragraph is.. think about what and where you want your team
to be once it gets started.
The next thing that I want to touch up on is again about
equipment, but in a different light. QRT has strict
requirements on what gear you MUST have in order to be on the
team. These requirements were put in place because we wanted a
uniformed look. In addition to having a general ‘uniform’ we
also did it so that we could ‘weed out’ the non-serious
players. For instance, QRT requires that you have spare
magazines for your AEG. Why? Well, one, we train on mag changes
but in addition, we don’t want to be advancing on a bunker and
have one of our guys be like, ”UH… I’m out of ammo.. .hold
on”. NO.. Change your mag and move on.
Anyway, when you start up your airsoft team, figure out what
‘minimum gear’ requirements you will have. At your first
meeting, you and the other members can figure out if that is
too much or not enough.
Communication is a key point to the survival of any team. Not
just airsoft but for anything. Let’s take baseball, for a
moment let’s pretend that they didn’t have the hand signal
between the catcher and the pitcher. So when the pitcher threw
the ball, the catcher would have to ‘hope’ that he can pick up
on it to catch the ball. Otherwise there will be a loose ball
and the opportunity for a runner to steal a base. Same thing
applies with an airsoft team. You have to communicate with
each other. Now, I’m not talking during games.. I am talking
in general. For instance, QRT has a special section on the
858airsoft.com forums where we talk about upcoming games,
training dates, team issues and more. It helps to keep our
team closer together to know what is going on. Now ‘obviously’
not every team can have a website or a forum, but if you are
reading this, you OBVIOUSLY have a computer. Hold team
discussions on other peoples forums, chat rooms, instant
messengers, etc. There is no excuse.. and since 858airsoft.com
forums ALLOW for teams to ‘chat’ on their forum.. YOU
DEFINITELY don’t have an excuse.
Non airsoft related events. From time to time, people are
going to get tired of doing the same thing over and over. This
is true about a lot of things, food, cars, video games and
everything in between. In order to have a ‘tight knit’ airsoft
team, you have to all get along, even when you are not playing
airsoft. QRT is more like a family then it is an airsoft
team. That is because we get together to do other things other
than airsoft. I’m not going to get into what it is that we
do.. because it will be different for every team. Just get out
and do something as a TEAM… anything.
The last thing that I want to talk about is team numbers.
Don’t try to get too big too fast. If you start with a large
team, you are asking for nothing but trouble. Hardly anyone
will agree and if you have someone stand up and say.. “Okay..
it’s going to be like this..” then a lot of people will
disagree and the team will be over even before it started. So
start small and get your team priorities squared away first.
Then once your foundation has been set, start letting in
members and you will be able to accept or deny people on their
skills and teamwork.
So now that you have read through my short story novel.. let
me break it down into a small list of things that I believe
will help you when starting up a new airsoft team.
1. Don’t assign a Commanding officer… at least not in the
beginning.
2. Set a training/meeting schedule and stick to it
3. Figure out what you want to your team to emulate and follow
that to it’s extreme.
4. Look into the future and figure out if you team ‘style’
will keep you from advancing.
5. Communicate with each other on all levels. After the game,
you still need to be friends.
6. Don’t start too big. If you do, it will be over before it
starts.
7. Get together as much as you can. The only time you see your
teammates SHOULDN’T BE only at the games.
8. Train together… fight together.
Remember the phrase…”A team is only as good as it’s worst
player”..
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