ZOO Win SPS 2013 Leg 1

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Published on Thursday, 04 April 2013 09:37

Written by Grant Harrison

The Singapore Paintball Series (SPS) is the premier paintball league in Singapore, celebrating it’s 5th year of operations since launching local tournaments in 2008. This year the event was back at one of the more popular locations, East Coast Park by the beach on Singapore’s South Eastern coast. The recreational park boasts plenty of food outlets and is frequented by many families, joggers, bicycle riders and skaters. The first leg of SPS featured 35 teams playing in 3 divisIons, Open Race-to-3, Division 3 Race-to-2 and Division 4 (Mech) with Asia Refs taking care of the officiating. Singapore still is one of the only countries in the region that does not allow personal marker ownership and organisers have worked tirelessly to set up marker rental systems at local fields and to get permission to import markers for those players who own markers in neighbouring countries. These improvements have seen an increase in the number of higher division teams competing, with many international teams and players also joining the event for the first time.

With no rain on the horizon Saturday, the temperature was in the mid 30’s and the pressure was on many of the teams to win enough preliminary matches to ensure their teams qualified for the Sunday finals. The field layout, a slightly modified version of the PALS Thailand layout, proved to be beneficial to teams who didn’t have a dedicated snake player, with teams being able to contain attacking moves on both sides of the field as long as they held the corners and backline. This lead to many drawn games and some inventive breakouts to try and grab back lost points. At the end of day 1, local team Contract Killers were knocked out of the Open Division with the Dark Knights/Shoot in Rage combo team called Dark Rage finishing in the prelim top spot in the Open Division. With many more teams registered in D3 and D4, their prelim games continued on Sunday morning.

Day 2 of SPS was just as hot as day 1 and the lower divisional teams did battle all morning to get a place in the finals. In Division 3 matches were very tight leading up to the semi finals. In Div 3 Blitzkrieg SG found themselves in a drawn match against A.C.E.S. which led to not 1 but 3 overtime games and finally a 1 on 1 to decide a match winner, with A.C.E.S. making it to the D3 semi finals. The Open Division first semi finals saw Dark Rage up against local team Blitzkrieg Singapore (Senior team) who were playing in their first Open division tournament and their first Race-to-3 tournament. Despite their inexperience, Blitzkrieg lived up to their name and managed to contain Dark Rage enough to win themselves an SPS finals spot. In the 2nd semi finals it was once again SPS rivals Red 7’s against ZOO. In a close battle Red 7’s got a quick first point but ZOO managed to come back at them to win the 2nd point. ZOO dug in, gained the lead and held on to take the match.

With fading light and many finals matches still to be played, the SPS organisers let the playoffs for 1st and 2nd place in each division be played first. In the Division 3 Finals AOV SKIN were up against A.C.E.S who narrowly made it into the Semis. The match was another close fight with SKIN losing a point when an A.C.E.S player hit the buzzer while being shot by the last AOV SKIN player. The call went in A.C.E.S favour and they went on to take the Division 3 Championship. In the Open Division with rain falling, ZOO took their time against the less experienced Blitzkrieg Singapore. After winning the first point ZOO contained their opponents and let the clock wind down to take their 4th sucessive SPS Leg 1 Championship.

Here are the final results of all divisions:

Open Division
Champions - ZOO
2nd - Blitzkrieg Singapore
3rd - Red Sevens
4th - Dark Rage

Division 3:
Champions - A.C.E.S
2nd - AOV SKIN
3rd - Outlaws SG
4th - Heartbreakers

Division 4:
Champions - SOP Hellions SG
2nd - Blitzkrieg SturmTruppen
3rd - SG Frontiers Rooks
4th - Kuzzins

Check out action photos from SPS Leg 1 courtesy of T/LT

Leg 2 and the final tournament of SPS 2013 will be held 7th and 8th September in Singapore.

For more information, please visit www.singaporepaintballseries.com / www.facebook.com/SingaporePaintballSeries or email the organisers at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.