NORMAL - Forget basketball, baseball or football. An Illinois State University team has brought home not one, but two national championships in a sport more colorful than all the rest. The ISU Red Bird Paintball Team beat teams from 40 other colleges and universities to win the Class AA collegiate paintball title and 15 other schools to win the elite Class A X-Ball title in competition in Lakeland, Fla. | Video: On the field with ISU's team | Photo gallery

The dual championships just before the end of spring semester are a first in the history of collegiate paintball, team spokesmen said.

Paintball is rooted in childhood games like cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers. But the war games, fought with guns that fire environmentally friendly paint encased in biodegradable shells, are far more intense, said team manager Drew Lawyer and club president Andrew Hanrath.

Teams battle it out on small fields outdoors or indoors. The goal is to eliminate opponents in a hail of non-lethal "bullets" in timed competitions.

"Generally, we don't think of paintball as a violent sport," said Hanrath, 21, who will enter his senior year in psychology at ISU. "It has that aspect to it. But paintball is probably one of the safest things I've ever done as a competitive sport. It's more of a team-building thing than a violent thing. If you're mad at your team players off the field, you can go, play and work it out."

Lawyer, 23, a Heyworth native, has been playing paintball since he worked at Sugar Grove Nature Center at Funks Grove. Former nature center director John Rehtmeyer, owner of a nearby paintball facility called Sudden Impact, hired Lawyer to work at the paintball business.

The ISU team practices at Sudden Impact, which sponsors the team with Bud Light and Farmer's Insurance. The team counts 35 active members, including three women.

Lawyer, who works at Country Financial after graduating from ISU, said the paint guns have evolved in design. They once used CO2 cartridges, but now carry enough plain compressed air to fire about 1,200 rounds of soybean-based paint. Rain and time eventually erase both paint and the shell from the landscape.

Goggles are the only safety gear needed.

Every kind of person shows up to play at Sudden Impact, he said. Religious youth organizations are among regular customers along with younger birthday crowds, bachelor parties and corporations that use the pseudo-survival experience to teach the importance of teamwork in business.

After arriving at ISU for his undergrad work, Lawyer learned about the club, which was founded in 2002. Ditto for Hanrath, a Libertyville native who played paintball in high school.

He migrated to the club when he arrived at ISU to find friends with similar interests. Today, he lives with three other members of the paintball squad. Several other team members share housing both on and off campus, he said.

"Our team has really good chemistry," he said. "We live together, we study together, we party together. It's special what we have in terms of a group."

That closeness comes in handy when paint-filled pellets start to fly, he said.

The paintball season coincides with the school year. Games are played on a field 150 feet long by 100 feet wide. Competitions are classed two ways, Class AA and Class A, which is also called X-Ball. ISU ranked first in both Class A and Class AA.

In Class AA, five-member teams compete against one another during five-minute games. Each team earns points based on the number of competitors they eliminate and now many survivors they have. Teams can earn more points by capturing a flag. Schools can field more than one team at Class AA events.

Class A, or X-Ball, is more intense. Teams complete in as many games as they can in 32 minutes divided into two 16-minute halves. In addition to earning points by eliminating the competition, surviving and capturing the flag, referees in Class A can assess penalties for violations.

Reminiscent of childhood days when kids refuse to admit they've been hit, paintball players try to hide when they've been struck with paint.

An observer might think the rigorous competition would require players to be in peak physical condition. Not so much, Lawyer said.

"Ideally, we would say yes, but paintball players are some of the most out-of-shape people you'd ever want to meet," he said. "It's one of those sports that anyone can do no matter what their physical limitations are. If you know when to shoot, where to shoot, if you can only run a minute-forty, you can still shoot people."