Encase anyone is confused by the sudden flood of bad reviews on Hurricane Paintballs site I would like to address the issue publicly. My name is Jason Elliott, I am a Field Manager and the Executive Head Referee for both Hurricane Paintball Park as well as Battlefield Orlando. I have been a referee for 11 years now and am known buy multiple field owners as well as respected by over 30 professional and semi-professional Teams across the South East. Hurricane paintball has a perfect track record of safety and have received hundred upon hundreds of fantastic reviews over dozens of websites, magazines, and various publications. We are nationally known as being one of the safest and friendliest fields to play at. I have given and instructed uncountable referee Safety Speeches over the course of my time working under different field owners. I personally gave the Safety Speech to the group that is complaining about our field. I can confirm that I mentioned on multiple occasions that our number one rule is to keep your mask/goggles on your face anytime you are on the game-side of the nets. I then escorted the group to the field where my head ref of the day was conducting a Chronograph check of all the guns. Miss Yaribel Hernandez was amongst the first set of people to get her marker checked. During the chrono-check, she removed her mask completely from her head to clean her glasses of fog. The ref instructed her to put her mask on, she said she would comply but continued cleaning her mask and glasses, he asked twice more for her to put her mask on noting that there were live markers currently firing less than 5 feet from her position. She replied that he needed to chill out and continued to ignore the request. The ref then instructed her to remove herself from the field as she could not follow safety instructions. Her father Charlie Hernandez then took his mask off and started berating the ref for telling his daughter to get off the field. At that point with 2 players displaying unsafe behaviors and an unwillingness to follow basic instructions the ref then followed agreed procedure and threw both players off the field. Mr.Hernandez continued to make vague threats of violence and vulgar displays in front of all other players that were waiting to have a game. The two players then approached the front desk crew and was again vulgar and aggressive with both ladies without addressing the issue at hand. Neither player was told that they needed to leave for the day, they determined on their own to remove themselves from the park. My own personal observations on this matter. 1: The two players had been given a safety speech not more than 5 min before the incident and were given 4 warnings before being thrown off the field. None of the other players had violated rules and were welcome to stay and continue to play. 2: we went to Grant and had a blast, they also told us how you cowards called them to warn them we were coming Yes, I am the one who made that phone call. When a group displays hostile attitude and actions, makes many threats and almost assaults our referee in front of 40+ players (some of which are County Sheriffs) it is our responsibility as a paintball community to warn each other of potential threats to their fields and players. I did not instruct them to Blacklist you, I simply alerted them to the fact that you had an issue on our field and that they should be aware. 3: racist employees Come on now, are we really gonna pull the race card on this. Let me explain something. We had over 230 players at our field this weekend alone. 30% of them were black. Another 20ish% where Hispanic. We have large groups of Asian and Musilum players from the local college on a weekly basis. One of our best and most respected referees is a young black kid. Three of our employees are Hispanic. Two are part Native American. We had a small Jamaican family start a team with the express purpose of playing at our field every month. We are so diverse and multicultural that it would be impossible to be racist at that field. What IS RACIST is assuming that out of those 230 players whom didnt have a problem following basic safety instructions, that we somehow decided that your daughter was the exception and to yell at her cause of her race. It IS VERY RACIST to assume that you are exempt from our rules because of your race. It is ALSO RACIST to assume that any of us are racist simply because we took issue with your actions. This negative review is akin to myself walking into your place of business, swinging a large stick around the work area, and when asked to leave, ignoring them and continuing to swing the stick until escorted off the property, at that point then start screaming that your place is racist and should be put out of business for telling me what I am doing is unsafe. 4:they want their teams to be against new people Please note that the group didnt make it past the chrono-check and thus had not even seen the teams. Every time we have large groups mixed with experienced players, the teams are split as balanced as possible, unfortunately it usually comes at the more experienced players expense as they are very rarely placed on the same sides unless the other team has players that can match their skill/experience, Many of our regulars are understanding that they might not get to play with their team unless other experienced players show up. Its through this team balancing that many of our new players can see up-close how the older players do things, learn from them, and become better players on their own. Also the regular players tend to go after other regulars before the walk-on players so as to give the new guys time to play as well. Our reputation for being a new-guy friendly field is unquestionable. 5: In summery let me just point out that 5 min on any website including here on facebook will render an obscene amount of 4 and 5 star reviews. The fact that this group is posting such low scores is not due to the field, but to the way this group handles the authority and rules of the field at which it played. Someone much wiser than I once said that you cant please everyone all the time. But someone much wiser than him once noted that sometime when you have a horrible situation, the cause might be yourself.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 00:03:11 +0000
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