Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we’d like to extend a warm welcome to our newest blogger, Nicole Episcopo. Nicole plays for our favorite girls team, Destiny, and will be updating us on her perspective as a female paintball player. In this installment, Nicole gives us a brief introduction to her career as a paintball player and provides some encouraging advice to new players, both male and female. Welcome Nicole! – Israel

Hello paintballers, future paintballers, and Social Paintball fans! My name is Nicole Episcopo, and I am a proud female baller for the Florida Division of Destiny Paintball. Katherine Secor is the Captain for the California Division of Destiny. This stellar female paintball organization is owned and operated by the one and only, Bea Paxson. In addition to my paintball lifestyle, Social Paintball has chosen me to participate in this weekly blog and I happily accepted. I feel that I can reach out to females from all over the world with a more personal and relatable approach.

First off, I would like to say, I was an athlete in high school. Even though that was 11 years ago, it is never too late to start a new sport and embark on a new journey with new people. I started this adventure about two years ago with about twenty of my closest friends. I decided that I wanted to have a paintball birthday party, so I did. It was held at Hotshots Paintball in Loxahatchee, Florida and we played woodsball all day. After the day was over, I was immediately hooked on this intriguing sport. I wanted to know if there was more to it and how to learn. Week after week, myself and five to seven friends went back and played woodsball. After about a month, only three of us continued to participate and we wandered over to the speedball field. This is when my true tournament, speedball interest took place.

I walked up to the starting board with my red Planet Eclipse Etek 2 paintball marker in my hands. I did not own any soft gear and I was wearing camo pants from Wal-Mart, a sports bra, a raggedy t-shirt, sneakers, and a borrowed mask. I had no idea what I was about to do, yet I still experienced excitement and my nerves were all over the place. I had two of my friends at the starting board with me, while three other people were on the other side. The whistle blew. I started shooting like crazy! The feeling of adrenaline was overwhelming and the sounds of the paintball markers were piercing! The game lasted about two minutes. I ran over to my friends and said, “How do I learn more? I want to play this from now on guys!” They quickly agreed and I sought more assistance from the employees at the aforementioned field we attended.

This is just the introduction of how my thrilling paintball career commenced. I plan on documenting the steps of my journey through this blog so all of you can be caught up to my current status as a paintballer. After you know exactly who I am and how I got to where I am today, I would like to invite all of you to come along for my journey as a Destiny player. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for the continuation of my paintball expedition.