Crewing for the Red Sevens

The Red Sevens have been recently invited to play in the Asian Invitational Tournament on the 2nd August weekend at Sebana Cove in conjunction with the Malaysian Flora Festival. A total of 10 Asian teams will be invited along with 5 US Based NPPL teams.

We have had a lot of offers to crew for us for the last leg of the MPOC series in JB in Oct and we will get offers to crew for the Asian Invitational. As much as we'd like to have crew around - I'd like to say that we cannot just take any one along as a crew member.

First of all a crew member is a crucial member of the team. He/she has to know what the game and how a tournament weekend works - what a player goes through over a tournament weekend to understand their needs.

So if you haven't been around emarkers- that is a big disadvantage. You will have to know how to handle emarkers- turning them on and off. Emarkers are more sensitive than mechanical markers and if you accidently fire a shot with the barrel sock on. You will have to clean the sock and the barrel. You'll have to know how to handle eloaders load, clean them and change batteries. And also the most important thing which is to take markers and tanks to air stations and knowing how to fill them.

If you're an experienced player who knows how to handle markers- you'd be able to chrono all the markers for the team and set up spare markers and get them chornoed and ready incase it's needed.

You have to know things like what goes on during chrono stage before the games. As a crew you have to bring paint to top up hoppers after choroning, towels and allen keys for the players to re adjust their markers in case they're hot. Clean towels to wipe sweat and dirty towels to clean off old paint marks.

After games comes the clean up of markers, hoppers and pods and refilling pods and tanks. You'd have to know how to take care of paint- how to clean paint that has some oil on it - how to clean the insides of hoppers and pods when there is a ball break.

There is a specific way of filling pods to prevent balls from breaking when you run and dive. You have to know which team member carries how many pods - what type of pods they like to use and how they like their harnesses set up and how the tabs of the pods are positioned in their harnesses.

To be a really good crew you'd have to know the game in depth - have a game mind and watch the team's and opponent's games and help in pre and post game analysis.

So crewing its not just a matter of rocking up and putting on a smile and helping to carry stuff. To be a really useful crew to the team - you'd really have to have some experience in being a real tournament player.

As much as I'd like to take more crew members - I would have to carefully consider who to take along and who will benefit the team as our crew.