As a Military Service Member myself First Responders have always held a special spot in my heart. That leads me this weeks Buffalo Paintball Spotlight; please allow me to introduce Morgan Walker! Morgan is a firefighter/paramedic that hails from Cleveland Ohio and has been playing paintball since 2009.
Morgan started out very similar to our last spotlight, on private property with friends of the family; of course that is never good enough so he started playing scenario games. He took time off to go to school for fire academy, EMT, and Paramedic. But then came back in 2016 with a vengeance to start playing competitively.
Morgan can't say enough great things about his local field is Pinnacle Woods Paintball Park (Chardon, Ohio). The store is ran by Stephen Pisek and his family. Of course, like most players who've been around since 2009 he's played more fields than he can remember for both scenario and competitive events. The furthest he's ever traveled for paintball is Las Vegas. Right before COVID hit he went to play Division 3 X ball with team OBR at the NXL event in 2020.
Coming from a Fire Department where everything is all about teamwork this is Morgan's favorite part of the game. Being such a team-oriented player he believes that "you can’t count on one person to play the game, everyone has to have a hand in". When he's on the field his marker of choice is the shocker AMP, he's impressed with how smooth it shoots and how well it performs in the cold (even when there's snow!). When we asked Morgan what his most memorable paintball moment is he said it was hands down traveling to Tampa with All Americans. For those who don't know them, the All Americans is a legendary paintball team comprised of current and past professional paintball players. Spesh Robinson, the captain of the team, invited Morgan to practice with them and then extended the invite for Morgan to play the event with them; we're not surprised, Morgan is pretty awesome both on and off the field! He says it was "pretty cool to play with some current professional paintball players such as Jacob and Jason Edwards". The team went on to take 1st place at the event.
Morgan may have started playing at 14 but he didn't step into the competitive scene until he turned 21. He likes to play competitively in any type of format. I like the 10 man competition format coming back. Morgan says "I think we owe a shout-out to the late Tim Montressor for bringing it back, he played a magnificent role in recreating classic paintball " and of course we couldn't agree more! Morgan focuses most of his time competing in the National Xball League as well. During competition play he usually plays the “snake” side.
Since Morgan has been competing in paintball since 2016 we wanted to talk to him more about that. We found out he usually plays snake side and has had a couple of notable placings in tournaments. His teams have come in first place two separate times in the UAPW series ran at Urban Assault paintball in Macdonald, PA and at a local APES tournament held at Pittsburgh Paintball Park, where he was playing with OBR they took second place.
We talked with Morgan about new players and asked him to share his advise. He recommends becoming a sponge, "Soak up all the information you can from guys who have been playing a long time. Accept constructive criticism. Always have fun while doing it too." For those considering entering the competitive paintball scene; "do it. He says, sure, it certainty is physically demanding it's all worth it." We couldn't agree more with Morgan when we talked about the friendships we create and he spoke about how the memories we make are priceless. We at Buffalo Paintball are happy to have Morgan as a friend.
~Eli Gallibois - PFOSA Founder | Buffalo Paintball