The UW-Platteville Paintball Club does not just want a trophy case on the UW-P campus, they need one. In just this past season, they’ve placed first or second in six tournaments.

The highly successful season ended with a second-place finish at the national paintball tournament, which not only secured their position as the 2010 National College Paintball Association’s number one college paintball team in the nation, but also earned them another trophy to add to their growing pile.

“I have all these trophies piled up in my room and we need somewhere to put them,” said Casey Howard, sophomore building construction management major. “We’ll even build the case if we need to.”

The 10 club members, Howard, Blake McShane, Alex Kornely, Phil Paque, James Tiedt, Lance Schumann, Matt Collins, Tyler Earnest, Christopher Schnurr and Ben Kisling, traveled to Lakeland, Fla. on April 9 to compete in the two-day tournament. They had to use all of their energy, skill and even their salesman skills to overcome a rough start to the tournament to take second place.

“We drove 23 hours straight, and so the first day we were all really tired. It was also about 80 degrees in Florida and we almost lost one of our players to heat stroke,” said McShane, freshman engineering major.

The team also bought bad paintballs, which don’t explode on impact like they should, which made eliminations harder and made their first games extremely difficult.

“The first day I had to walk around and sell all of the bad paint so we could buy better stuff,” said Collins, sophomore mechanical engineering major.

After they had sold all the bad paint, adjusted to the heat, and had a good night’s rest, the tournament went much better for the club. On the second day of the tournament, in the semifinals, they beat one of the most competitive teams attending.

“The University of Nebraska-Omaha’s team had two professional players and two players from Div. I and II schools,” said Earnest, junior criminal justice major. “Out of all the teams, we wanted to beat those guys the most. We actually maxed them one game, which means that we eliminated all of their players and didn’t lose one of ours.”

The fact that they beat Nebraska-Omaha, whom they have named the University of Vicious, 2-0 made losing to the East Tennessee State University Buccaneers in the final round a little easier.

“We put up a good fight, but Tennessee deserved to win,” Howard said.

The club is losing three of its key members this year, graduating seniors Kornely, Shumann and Nathanial Douse, but they are looking forward to next season. The club, which meets at 7 p.m. every Tuesday in the Wisconsin Room of the Pioneer Student Center, is always looking for new members to help defend their No. 1 ranking and bring home more trophies.