Paintball Club is shooting their way to colorful friendships. They have a tight bond – a brotherhood, of sorts.

“I enjoyed paintball and wanted to try to get into it more,” freshman Camden Hutchison said. “I barely went, then I found a group of people to go with me and hang out with at school.”

The club meets to play the game once or twice a month at Jaegers Paintball Park in Kansas City. At Jaegers, students can rent anything they need. All they need to compete is an attitude ready to make friends and play paintball.

“It is my hope that the paintball club continues to grow in a positive what at LHS both in numbers and in the scale of activity,” Liberty Middle School teacher and club sponsor Wiley Meade said. “I would like to see more students participate in competitive level paintball.”

Many students in the club have had a love for paintball for some time now. The club at school has helped them further their enjoyment of paintball, play it more often and get their peers into the sport as well.

“It gets a lot of students who don’t have hobbies outside of school into it,” freshman Michael Westrich said. “This is introducing them to a new hobby and also gets them very active because paintball is definitely a very active and physical thing to do.”

Along with playing with students at school, some students even venture outside of LHS.

“Some students also participate in tournaments in the Kansas City area and even at Oklahoma D-Day which is one of the largest paintball scenario games in the United States,” Meade said.

As with many games, there is more than one type. There’s a regular game as well as capture the flag.

“If we’re playing a regular game, you can go in there and just go at it,” freshman Tristan Nitsch said. “There’s yellow and blue teams at Jaegers. You go in and you go at the other team and the other team goes at you until either time goes out or the other team falls out.”

With so many clubs at LHS, Paintball Club helps pull the trigger on a new hobby and new friendships come along with it.

“It gives us the opportunity to learn more about different clubs that give us the opportunities to go check it out and see how it is,” Nitsch said. “If you’ve never played it before, then it’s an opportunity to learn.”

The club was started several years ago by a student who was passionate about paintball and has only flourished since then. Meade, a competitive paintball player himself, volunteered to sponsor the club because of his love for the sport and the students at LHS.

“My favorite part of the club is definitely getting to see kids who know nothing about paintball from the start and then they get super into it and want to know more about it,” Westrich said. “It shows that you’re introducing them to it and getting people involved.”

The club meets every Monday during Liberty Hour in room 608 and is definitely an opportunity to make some new friends and discover a new hobby.

“For everybody who doesn’t have a lot of friends, you go in not having a lot of friends and we’re all nice,” sophomore Jayce Baldwin said. “It’s a loving community.”