For 11 years the National Professional Paintball League (NPPL) has promoted and produced the Huntington Beach Surf City Open, one of the most popular and well attended events on the pro/am paintball tour. But when the calendar turned from 2013 to 2014 the NPPL announced that they were going to take a year off from running paintball events to reorganize and regroup. Shortly after that announcement came the news the HK Army would be running the standalone Surf City Paintball Open this year–good news indeed for paintball teams and players looking forward to the California sun and the tradition of the event.
This year’s Surf City Open was played in a completely different format than previous years. No more seven-man. The original 2014 scheduling of the event called for two versus two, RaceTo 2 with a three minute time limit and five versus five basic five-man center flag format–with a variety of divisions in both formats (from Pro/Open down to Division Four). However low attendance in the Open/Pro division and Division Two RaceTo 2 divisions caused HK to cancel those games. All of the other scheduled divisions went off without a hitch. Unfortunately the Millennium Series opener and Huntington Beach events were scheduled for the same weekend–possibly causing the lack of registrations for the Open division.
One field was used for this event and as usual, it was set up right on the beach. Just off the beach were the vendors which included D3FY, HK Army and a few others. Although the team turnout was small there was a handful of recognizable teams – teams like Destiny, LA Collision, Wicked, Blitz, Aggressive Factory and others. There were some fun two versus two pairings. How about Alex Fraige and Yosh Rau playing together? Or Justin Schwartz and Tyler Harmon?
When all was said and done the two versus two winners were Justin Schwartz and Tyler Harmon and second place went to Shane Howel and Tim Brusselback. LA Collision took the Division Three with Blitz taking second. Square One took the Division Four crown and they were followed by Str8shooters.
Although this year’s Huntington Beach event lacked the team count and vibe of previous years, credit goes to HK Army (and Chuck Hendsch) for picking up the event on short notice and keeping it alive. Hopefully the NPPL will either pick this back up or sanction the event for another promoter (maybe HK again) early enough to have a shot at success next year.
Photos by Gary Baum
