Below you will find the story behind “Team Watchmen”, from birth to death this team was one of the memorable ones in the St. Louis area. Not because we “cleaned up” at every event, it was due to our hospitality, personalities and kindness to everyone who came in contact with us. Originally as an internal joke between the team members about how no one paid attention to us, one member would cry out “Who watches the Watchmen?” to which all the other members would yell “No One!”. During 2004 at tournaments all around St. Louis, team members and spectators alike would yell out the battle cry...

The team started with Nate “MonkeyMan” Young. Nate convinced Parvez “Peabody” Yusufji that he should get into paintball. Typical with Peabody's nature, he jumped in full force. In a job-related conversation, Parvez mentioned to John “zariok” Draughn that he was going out to play paintball on a particular weekend. Within weeks, several other friends of friends have joined playing on a regular basis including Ernest “Chief” Glaneman, William “Willie” Stampley, Josh “Joshman” Hall, Chris “TriggerHappy” Satkowski, and Chad “Frogger” Middleton.

After the group had successfully been making it all out to the field on a semi-regular basis, John's enthusiasm really caught. Soon enough, the entire group was on the field almost every weekend. They soon added Scott “Tiny” Lasek, Dan Pearmund and Dennis Pape who were regulars at Gateway Paintball as well.

As a group, we then discovered the calling of tournaments. It started with a 2-man tournament that Parvez and Chad completed under the name of “Fu Leng's Minions”, a reference to the Legend of the Five Rings role playing game.

On 16^th of November 2003 John, Nate and Parvez entered and played a 3-man tournament out at Gateway where Nate suggested “The Watchmen” as the team name. The name stuck and “Team Watchmen” was born. Due to a rule that was not covered in the Captain's Meeting, the team lost an opportunity to go to semi-finals.

After a disappointing 5-man tournament at Wacky Warriors in Millstadt, IL on the 7^th of December 2003, the group realized we needed much more practice and experience before we could go toe-to-toe with some of the seasoned veterans.

On the 11^th of January, Parvez was approached by Eric Kilgore, the owner of Gateway Paintball, and we accepted a field/store sponsorship.

It was a chilly Saturday evening at the Yusufji house on the 31^st of January 2004 when the group decided to formalize the team, commit to practices and schedule who was going to play in the 2004 tournaments.

For most of 2004, we were primarily focused on the 3-man and placed three teams into the Gateway Paintball 3-man series.

Watchmen A consisted of John, Parvez and Nate.

Watchmen B consisted of Ernest, Josh and Chad.

Watchmen C consisted of Tiny, Dan and Dennis.

In all the Gateway Paintball 3-man series, one or more of our teams placed in the top 5 and the “B” team took 2^nd place for the series.

During the late summer and fall following the conclusion of the 3-man series, the team silently began drifting. We picked up Ryan Aubuchon to fill in when Dennis was missing in action. Some of the players continued playing (Josh, John and Ernest) while others randomly showed up for practices.

In November, three Watchmen and two young guns from Gateway Paintball played and placed 2^nd in the Wacky Warriors 5-man OPEN for the anniversary tournament which sparked the team.

Due to how little the “team” was practicing, the team met for pizza and to discuss the direction of the team in the middle of December. The options were: a) continue playing as a group of friends whenever we can get together or b) Form a solid team with mandatory practices and start playing 5-man tournaments.

The decision was to become a solid 5-man team.

What followed was the slow disappointing showing for practices, team duties and events and the team dissolved. The 'official' date is 18^th of June 2005, when only Willie and I showed up for practice. Willie was there to “quit” for obvious reasons, no one played. It was this date the team was disbanded.

Today the team spirit lives on...

The group who played as “Team Watchmen” are still friends and hang out every so often.

A couple of us can be found running the fields at Gateway Paintball and mixing in with other local teams.