For Greg Windsor and K.C. Crawford, creating excitement about their Spokane business isnt much of a problem. Thats easily supplied by the adrenaline rush their customers feel while firing paintballs at 300 feet per second at one another as they dive for cover inside or just outside a former meat-packing plant.


Windsor and Crawford own 16-year-old Virtual Assault Paintball Games, which is located at 4103 E. Mission and is one of the only indoor-outdoor facilities here where paintball enthusiasts can pay a fee to blast their foes.


Virtual Assault caters both to competitive paintballers and to those who just want to have fun and reduce stress, and it often hosts birthday and bachelor parties, as well as businesses that bring their employees there.


Kenny Peterson, a Post Falls firefighter, says he and his fellow firefighters get together once or twice a month to shoot it out with paintballs. It allows us to wind down on our days off and provides a good activity for guys to hang out, he says.


Though Virtual Assault sells paintball guns (called markers), accessories, clothing, and supplies in its retail store there or via its Web site, a big part of its revenue comes from fees for use of its indoor and outdoor paintball venues. It charges about $30 per person for a four-hour recreational session, which includes rental of a safety mask and enough paintballs to keep most customers supplied for that length of time, Crawford says. Players can bring their own markers or rent them. Tournaments, in which teams often play nine, five-minute games over the span of a day, can cost each player, including paintballs, about $75, he says.


Windsor, who launched the venture and is majority owner, says use of the facility is growing about 25 percent a year, though merchandise sales are declining due to increasing competition from Internet vendors. The business had revenue last year of nearly $500,000, and employs up to four people in the summer, he says.


Next month, the company will erect a 9,000-square-foot tent over its 7,500-square-foot outdoor court, which can be converted into two courts.


It will have some heating to allow us to play paintball in that court year-round, and provide relief from direct sunlight in July and August when we lose some customers because of the heat, he says.


Windsor says the bulk of the businesss customers range between 12 and 24 years of age, and the median age continues to fall as children pick up the sport at an earlier age.


Many of our players get the bug, get intensely into it, then drop out within two years, he says.


Because so many players are younger, business peaks on weekends and in the summer when school is out, he says.


Still, Crawford says its not uncommon to have customers as old as 70.


He says 90 percent of Virtual Assaults customers are male, but girls and women occasionally book the facility for parties, and members of a girls basketball team that recently rented the venue were every bit as ruthless in their approach to paintball as any of the mens groups.


A team sport


Although paintball might look unstructured to the unknowing, its usually a competitive team sport governed by rules, says Windsor.


While other paintball facilities may feature five-on-five or seven-on-seven teams, weve found our little niche primarily to be three-on-three teams, he says.


Playing paintball outdoors, where players have full view of their opponents, is markedly different than playing in Virtual Assaults indoor court, where the action involves many rooms and barricades, Windsor says.


The 12,000-square-foot indoor court is inside the 55,000-square-foot building Virtual Assault occupies on Mission. Crawford says that not only does the inside court have multiple connecting rooms to provide a variety of settings for players, but the walls and drain system of the former meat-processing plant make it easier to clean up after paintball battles.


Virtual Assaults outdoor court, located on the businesss 3-acre property there, is 135 feet long and 65 feet wide, and includes a total of 19 inflatable bunkers behind which players can hide.


Tournaments are held outside there every four to six weeks for beginner, intermediate, and upper-division players. Tournament rules are strictly enforced. Six referees watch the action of the six players on the course for each game, disqualifying players who receive a paintball hit at least the size of a quarter anywhere on their anatomy or on their markers, says Crawford. He says referees for Virtual Assault tournaments come from Virtual Assaults tournament team, which hosts such events, but doesnt participate.


The three-member teams face off at opposite ends of the court with a flag placed midway between them.


Their goal, in games that typically last five minutes or less, is to capture the flag and return it to their end of the field with the least number of casualties among their teammates.


Crawford says such games include skill and strategy. Often, a smaller, faster player, carrying less ammunition than his teammates, will race toward the flag while his teammates in the back row, carrying up to 1,000 rounds of ammunition in the highest level of competition, divert the attention of opponents with barrages of as many as 30 paintballs per second each, he says. Guns firing that rapidly are semiautomatic in design and have computer-controlled triggers.


Team scores are kept for each game, ranging down from a perfect 100 points when a team eliminates the enemy and retrieves the flag without losing any players to enemy fire. Crawford says as many as 33 teams have participated in a tournament, and with seeding done by computer, teams often play eight or nine games during a one-day tournament.


Virtual Assault creates different games that are played indoors, where colored armbands are worn by players to identify team members. Such variations range from a bodyguard game in which one player, such as the person having a birthday, is the main target; military games where players are eliminated only when hit from the waist up; and games where players are eliminated only when a paintball strikes an X taped across their chest.


Indoor games are more recreational in nature, usually include only one referee, and are much more intense, says Crawford. The fear factor is a lot higher inside, where you never know whos lurking around the next corner, he says.


Paintball markers range from slower, mechanical models that shoot up to 10 paintballs a second and sell for as little as $75, to high-tech versions that can shoot 30 paintballs a second and can cost as much as $2,000. All markers propel the paintballs with blasts of either compressed air or carbon dioxide, which is contained in a small tank attached to the weapon. They all also typically have a 200-paintball hopper affixed to the top of the marker.


The cheaper markers use recoil to re-cock themselves, and the paintballs feed down into the firing mechanism by gravity alone. The higher-priced markers have computer-controlled trigger systems and motorized paintball feed systems.


Crawford says the most common markers used at Virtual Assault cost about $300.


Many players also carry a backpack containing extra paintballs, usually four, 140-ball containers, says Crawford. He says one tank of CO2 or compressed air will fire about 400 rounds of ammunition and can be refilled in seconds during play, at no extra cost to the player.


Crawford, who was an avid paintball player in Pennsylvania before he moved to Spokane, says he knows of no paintball facilities that allow the use of fully automatic paintball markers. He says such markers would increase the chances of having more than one paintball hit a player in one spot and heighten the chance of injuries.


Other than an occasional sprained ankle, Virtual Assaults customers have sustained no injuries, he says.


In addition to mandatory paintball masks, which cover the entire face of a player and his or her ears, players typically wear long-sleeve jerseys, shoes, and long pants, he says.


Some bulk up with additional clothing to ease the sting of getting shot and also to increase the chance a paintball will hit a softer piece of clothing and bounce away without exploding, thus keeping the player from being eliminated from competition.