A TANTRUM STORY:
In 2000, at a rural field outside of Raleigh North Carolina, two paintball referees, Josh Griffin and Joe Forrest, decided to become roommates and start a paintball team. Under the tutelage of the field manager Ryan Hart, they searched for rec players to join their ranks and quickly discovered current members Mikey Cordes, Adam Clark, and Kenny Broda. These five, plus the addition of Bradley Ribble and father and son duo Nick Franciose and Nick Fanciose Jr. (little Nick) came together and named their team Tantrum after little Nick’s favorite wakeboarding trick. During the middle of the 2000 season, Josh and Joe gained more reffing help and the eight rotated doing drills on Saturday between reffing and practiced together every Sunday. With having very little tournament experience and a squad full of brand new tournament players, Team Tantrum lost every point in the last 2 events in the 2000 ACTS rookie division. This would not discourage this new team, but instead would motivate them to work harder. Meanwhile, in the preseason of 2001, their mentor Ryan Hart went off with his friends, Tyler Humphrey and Brian Stewart, who were playing on a local team called Flipmode, and merged with Rob Staudingers’ Mayhem to form the Amateur B team, Trauma. Ryan worked diligently with his friends on Tantrum plus their new addition Chase Thomas and in 2001 Tantrum took the ACTS rookie division by storm. Out of 20+ teams each event, Tantrum made podium in four out of five events and took first place in 3 events. They also played 2 CFOA events with 50+ teams and won one of them but lost in the semis in the other. After the success of the 2001 season, Josh and Mikey made the jump to Trauma’s farm team Mayhem and under the guidance of Rob Staudinger continued to be successful at the national and local level. Joe and Bradley moved to the Team First Strike where they worked with David Wooten (who later joined Trauma). The rest of the members recruited current member Jesse Velasquez and others to continue the team through the 2003 season. The team moved to the CFOA, and had good showings including one more first-place finish. Unfortunately, after the 2003 season the real word called and stuff like college and bills dissolved most of the teams and Tantrum was no more… Tantrum players joined other teams, had similar successes at the local level, but the team name Tantrum was just a memory. That is until the end of the 2017 season, when Chase Thomas brought most of his previous team mates back for a Tantrum resurgence. Chase, Jesse, Josh, Mikey, Kenny and Adam joined forces with their old rival, Team Impalers. Former rivals Casey Brown and Alex Kwasnicka joined the family and they picked up right where they left off. Other players, each from former teams one of the “core” members played on, started to slowly join the ranks to play 11 events (in several different series) in the 2018 season. The aggressive, (#HesitateAndLose) Trauma inspired, playstyle that Tantrum has always been locally known for helped these 30+ year-olds to reach the podium 7 out of 11 events in the D5 division despite a decade away from the sport. These wins included 4 first place finishes (one is a “open”, non-APPA 3 man), and an EPL South D5 Championship. Our hunger to get better and continue have fun as brothers continue to motivate us to play every weekend and rekindle old friendships. Moving forward, Tantrum has expanded including picking up Bryan Taylor as another coach and plans on playing 3 local series. We have added more youth and are in preparations in playing the EPL in both D4 and D5 divisions, the CPSL in D4 and D5, and the CXL in the D5 division. Also, in the Tantrum fashion, we have picked up some newer players to groom while they compete in the D6 CXL and EPL series. Our goals are simple. Win, while we promote the sport we all love and all came back to. To contact us, please check us out on Facebook, Instagram, or come see us at Black River Paintball! |