Clark, Philippines July 10th, 2011 Angel sponsored team ZOO, based in Singapore placed 2nd in the Division 2 finals of the Paintball Asia League Series (PALS) held at Clark, Pampanga, Philippines held from July 8th-10th 2011.

Playing a race to 2 format, ZOO were undermanned after one of their players unexpectedly ended up in hospital prior to the event. Despite this set-back, the team of 5 players still had high hopes of a podium finish for the PALS event. In Division 2, teams from Singapore, Philippines and Malaysia battled for a place in the Semi Finals. ZOO started the preliminary rounds well with easy wins.

They had a tough match against CMX from Malaysia and with the game drawn at 1 point each and 50 seconds left on the game clock, ZOO’s Filipino born player Allan Hernandez had his very own J-Rab moment sneaking down the field to hit the buzzer with 2 seconds left on the clock to win the match.

In another Russian Legion inspired play, ZOO captain Grant Harrison found himself in a 1 on 1 game deciding play against a player from Singaporean team Red Sevens. Low on paint, he forced his opponent waste paint while letting them get field position on him down the dorito side. Once his opponent had made it to ZOO’s own 30 dorito, Grant quickly blindsided his opponent, bunkering them with the few balls he had left and winning the match.

With the Prelims over, ZOO had won enough games to make it to the Semi Finals against Malaysian team CMX. In a quick match, ZOO defeated CMX 2-0 to see them playing off for the number 1 spot against reigning 2010 PALS Philippines Champions, Xtioneers 2 from Malaysia.

In the first point ZOO fell foul of a 1 for 1 call and despite holding Xtioneers for many minutes, eventually had to concede the first point. In the second point, ZOO once again fell foul of an over-zealous 1 for 1 call in the first few seconds of the game. Another dubious hit call saw the team overwhelmed by the Xtioneers and ZOO had to settle for 2nd place in the PALS Philippines tournament.

Also playing at the event were Angel sponsored team Persian Legend from Iran. Persian Legend made it to the Semi Finals in Division 1. They lost their Semi Finals match against Australian team STK and had to play off for 3rd and 4th place against Xtioneers from Malaysia. Xtioneers proved to strong for Persian Legend but it was still a good result for the team given the experience of their opponents.

ZOO and Persian Legend both plan to play in the final round of PALS, the World Cup Asia to be held on the tropical island of Langkawi in Malaysia, November 2011.

In our first season competing in Division 2, we have decided more effort this year trying to play more PALS tournaments, rather than the usual MPOC series in which we finished second place overall last year. PALS Thailand was our first tournament outside of Singapore and Malaysia, held in Bangkok Thailand 28/29 May 2011.

It was a little bit of a struggle finding enough  players from our usual squad to play so we imported some new players including Moya (Dark Knights - Malaysia) and Matt Boynes (Tension - Australia). Also playing for the team for the fist time was Moon from our sister Malaysian team SiR. Also playing for ZOO were myself, Abdullah, Boy (SiR) and Nick (Ronin). Unfortunately many of our regular players couldn't get time off for PALS Thailand or were competing with SiR at the Malaysian ISSC event which was held on the same weekend in KL.

Competing at international paintball events is a logistics nightmare and our weekend didn't start well with no less than 4 players missed their flights to Bangkok - luckily they managed to get on other flights and made it to Bangkok. In Division 2 we were competing against teams from Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Russia, France, Thailand, Japan and the United Arab Emirates and with very little information on the form of these teams, we had to treat everyone with respect.

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April 2011

ZOO paintball team convincingly defeated team SKIN 2-0 in last weekend's Singapore Paintball Series, making it back-to-back championships in the Open Division of Singapore's premier paintball tournament event.

The Singapore based team, founded in 2008 by a group of console gamers achieved yet another milestone in their competitive paintball history.

In 2010, the team became the first Singapore team to win an event at the Malaysian Paintball Official Circuit (MPOC) and finished 6th place in the 2010 World Cup Asia international paintball tournament.

During the Preliminary rounds of SPS played on Saturday, ZOO didn't have everything go their way. Out of 6 matches against other local paintball teams, ZOO managed only 3 wins, failing to take advantage of early game leads and finding themselves in an unfamiliar position at the end of the day.

Fortunately in a day of game upsets, ZOO managed to finish the Prelims ranked 4th giving them a chance at coming back to play in the Semi-finals on Sunday.

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