Timid often find a killer instinct

— There’s an episode of L.A. Law in which lawyers from the firm go out paintballing. One of them, Stuart Markowitz, a normally squishy kind of man, goes ballistic and earns the name “Rambowitz.”

Though fiction, the storyline illustrates what veterans say happens to a lot of people: that a player can become almost intoxicated by the thrill, and that it can happen to anyone.

Earlier this fall, University of Central Arkansas student Haley Morgan gathered about two dozen of her sorority sisters and headed down Arkansas 365 to Paintball Arkansas.

“There were some young girls that were a little scared, and they ended up having the time of their lives. It’s just one of those adrenaline rushes, just in the-moment.”

Co-owner of Shred-It Arkansas, Jeff Ward, took his sales teams from Springdale and North Little Rock out to the course to breathe new life into the old maxim “Life is competition,” he said.

“I recall one guy in particular that started out popping his head out and shootin’ every once in a while [and changed] to just being Rambo.”

He said “everyone to a man enjoyed it,” a sentiment Morgan agreed with, although “there were some welts, I’m not going to lie,” she said.

ActiveStyle, Pages 30 on 11/22/2010

Upcoming Events