Asher W., Age 16
Tribe of Benjamin

There has never been a more valiant and courageous troop than the noble six of the camp
Gilgal Light Brigade. Aimed with paintball guns and sporting matching Adidas merch, Y’didiah, Judah, Elliot, Shai, Daniel, and I did battle against foe after formidable foe, heroically braving minor bruises and multi-colored projectiles.

Lord Tennyson, who was there at the time, wrote about us in his poem, the Light Brigade, when he said,
“When can their glory fade
O, the wild charge they made…
Honor the charge they made
Honor the [Camp Gilgal] Light Brigade.”

Yeah. You could say paintball was epic.

At first glance, us Camp Gilgal campers do not look like natural born soldiers. In fact, we often appear completely incapable of playing paintball altogether. For example, many of us have less than 20-20 vision, suffer from asthma, and have very poor depth perception. We have also diagnosed ourselves with stage 5 terminal forgetfulness, spontaneous orthopedic paralysis, and the eponymous bone termite disease. All in all, when we showed up at the paintball place, we were not expecting to be very good.

The first thing the six of us did upon arrival was size up the opposition. They were giants and we were grasshoppers. Clad in black paintball masks and armed with chrome guns, we were fighting campers from nearby Camp Pinnacle (though formidable they turned out to be really nice). The Pinnacle kids were crazy good. But Gilgal was better. Dodging paintballs and diving behind plywood bunkers, we asserted our dominance in every match.

Paintball was an amazing experience and I can’t wait to play again.