Profile: Jay Yeomans, paintball referee
June 28, 2008 at 12:00 pm by Michelle Ye Hee Lee in Profile
Jay Yeomans, 51, is head referee at Paintball Atlanta. An aficionado of paintball for 15 years, he also maintains the company’s equipment and the facilities.
“You get bruises, maybe a couple little stitches, a turned ankle, something like that – something you can do playing in the backyard. But no one has had a serious injury [at Paintball Atlanta], especially eye-related.”
“Everybody [at Paintball Atlanta] has got to deal with me sooner or later. I’m not known for my wonderful attitude.”
“When a paintball hits you in the mask and it’s in your mouth, usually you gag, hack and spit. And cussing usually is in there somewhere. It’s got that 4-week-old, uncooked meat smell. It’s nasty.”
On his daughter: “She just turned 18, she’s been playing for four years. She’s very brutal. She put Father’s Day scars on both sides of my neck. It’s alright. I got her later.”
Is paintball a sport? “What is your definition of a sport? Okay, like football where you’re playing against another team in front of an audience – spectators – at the big tournaments? You get just as many people as you would on a decent football game. There is money at stake, trophies at stake, sponsorships from manufacturers.”
On real guns: “Most of my guns, I have sold. One of them was grandfather’s shotgun – sentimental. I kept that. One’s a pistol – protection. I kept that.”
“Paintball is nothing like the military. It’s a very sore spot. There are a lot of people out there, churches and other organizations that consider paintball as teaching our children paramilitary training, how to kill somebody else. I’ve called it a paintball gun – we call it a paintball marker. . We don’t kill in paintball, we eliminate. Usually until the next game starts up, which is usually in about 10, 15 minutes.”
“Because the word “gun” is just not a good thing to be thrown around. You can’t talk about paintball in schools because it involves a gun, if you will. Because my daughter tried to set up a team, to start playing a team at school. And the word “gun” came out, and they said, ‘That’s it. Forget it.’”
“The pay’s good and it’s a job I love doing. You can’t beat that.”
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
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