Paintball Festival

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It's impossible to have "been around" in paintball and not know the name Debra Dion Krishke. From promoting the company which founded the sport to producing one of the world's longest running annual tournaments, Krishke has had significant impact on both the sport and industry of paintball. After a few-year hiatus, Debra is back at the helm of a national level paintball event combining competition, scenario gaming and an industry conference and trade show. Debra took some time out of her busy schedule to talk with us about her history in the game and what new things she has in store.

WARPIG: To many, your name is tied to paintball, but turning back the clock to the pre-paintball era, what were you doing?

Debra: After graduating from FSU I went over to Iran for two years with Grumman Aerospace. Upon returning, which was a year before the revolution ( circa 1978) I opened a restaurant in New Hampshire. That's where I met the founders of the industry - Charles Gaines and Bob Gurnsey.

Paintball Industry Legends: Left to right:
Tom Kaye - AGD - Designer of the Automag
Debra Krishke - Producer of the Amateur Open
Bob Gurnsey - NSG - Inventor of the game
Jessica Sparks - APG - Magazine editor and lobbyist
Bob McGuire - APL - insurer of the sport
Bud Orr - WGP - Designer of the Autococker

WARPIG: You were involved in the paintball industry before anyone even called it an industry. National Survival Game was the first distributor of paintball products for the sport and had the first paintball field franchise program. How did you get involved in NSG and what was your role there?

Debra : The men who started NSG became regulars at my restaurant and asked me to play. I loved the game from the first time I played and started playing almost every weekend. Several months later they asked me to represent the game on the Phil Donahue show ( the precursor to Oprah for those kids reading this:) so I started traveling and repping the game on local talk shows around the country. I was hired as the PR Director and quickly also took over the structuring of their regional/national competition. We were growing so fast we all wore a lot of hats. Mine included regional meetings, monthly newsletters, media, and the National Championships. It was a wild time! Paint that was indelible. Goggles that weren't designed for this game. Markers that weren't designed to shoot people. No chronographs. Rules we had to design through trial and error. Lawsuits up the wazoo. New markers that WERE designed for paintball but had a lot of issues. It was a rough, rocky road. Pretty amazing this game ever made it to become an industry!!

WARPIG: By 1990, you'd seen that there was a need for class separation in paintball tournaments, with "pro" teams just obliterating less experienced teams because all tournaments were what we'd now call "open class" - something that we almost never see anymore. What was the tipping point that made you decide to produce the National Amateur Open.

Debra: I thought we needed a place for the broader segment of the market to come out and play and enjoy a real gathering of paintball aficionados. All our focus as an industry was being poured into the top 1% of the marketplace. It just made sense to me to create something that would appeal to the broader base of recreational players. But pretty much everyone thought I'd fail. Bud Orr was one of the first to support my efforts. The big issue was how would I qualify players? We set up the rules and did the best we could but we know some folks beat the system. When I found out during one of the events
that players were roster jumping during the finals - I was appalled. The next year we mandated photo id's and again - we did the best we could to make sure the team was truly amateur and rosters stayed in tact for the entire event.

WARPIG: In addition to PR and event promotion, you've had field owner in your list of titles, too. How and when did Three Rivers Paintball come about?

Debra: My husband Ryan and a couple of friends started Three Rivers Paintball as just a money generating hobby back in 1982. They were one of the first NSG fields in the country. I always accused him of marrying me so I could run his second business for him:) Over the years we've both run the field operations, sometimes with him at the helm, sometimes with me, and sometimes both of us. During the IAO years we'd both be in the saddle for months leading up to it. Now our daughter is running the operation and doing a fabulous job! She's certainly grown up with it!

WARPIG: It seems you have always had a vision for the paintball industry that other tournament promoters have lacked. While other events have focused strictly on the paintball competition, the International Amateur Open was much more, with a huge trade show (at a time when few tournaments had more than a factory tech booth or two), player's party and industry conferences including classes on business development for field and store owners, and even motivational speakers. What impact did you see these activities have on the growing sport and industry?

Debra: I'd like to think we had such a successful run because we stayed "Customer" focused. Our slogan"Unforgettable Memories are the Most Enduring Trophies of All" wasn't just a tag line but truly one of the underlying values that drove the event. We wanted to create an experience that attendees would talk about all year long. In an industry that was political and competitive we tried to create "Switzerland" where we could all come together and celebrate what united us - not what divided us.

In the early years, when manufacturers were into their own product line, and everyone was just trying to grow the sport , there wasn't the animosity that developed down the road. Once the PSP and NPPL divided the industry - it was a critical blow not just to the IAO but to the entire industry . We were too small an industry to split up. There just weren't enough resources to exhaust them in so many different directions. And outside industry companies weren't being brought in to share the load. Now with the economy tightening up recreational dollars, it's more imperative than ever that we stick together for the betterment of the sport.

I'm a neutral party in the paintball world and as such I don't have a conflict of interest. I'm for all manufacturers and I'm for all players. Don't have much time for liars and thieves however, so thankfully they have been few and far between over the years.

Richmond Italia, then president of Diablo Paintball,
announces the company's sponsorship of the 2011
IAO at a press conference with Debra and Ryan Krishke.

Debra: We knew we could do a really good job of branding so it made sense for us to offer that title position to a paintball manufacturer who stood the most to gain. We came under a lot of attack by mandating the paint being used at our event, but it made perfect business sense and we had an excellent marriage with Zap for over a decade. Our customers ultimately benefited from attending a well organized, well produced, successful event. We could afford to have amenities that the players loved. Right down to the banners and signage - we represented our sport and our sponsors well. That's probably why they stuck with us for years. I'd go to other events that honestly looked like pig styes. There was no accountability. Players tents were knee deep in trash, no event signage. Truly an embarrassment to our sport, the players, the media, and the sponsors. We had rules that sponsors appreciated. Mess with one of our hotels, you were ousted from the event. Our sponsors worked with us to offer all kinds of benefits to the players and they are what made the IAO an amazing experience for many.

Debra Krishke at the
International Amateur Open Industry Conference

Debra: It's what is really at the heart of this sport. That's what the first game was all about, and it's an underlying core value of game that I think is critically important. It's gotten lost along the way - when competition and big money and sponsorship is at stake - sportsmanship - or doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do can easily get lost in the shuffle. We were the launching pad for all the young teams, so we wanted them to grow up with "The Right Stuff". Our Ultimate Refs made the decision each year. They'd get input from their refs on the field ( over 120 refs on location in our hayday:) Players need to be able to look in the mirror and know they are honest, have standards, play fair and with integrity. That's where self esteem comes from and it's up to us as parents and leaders in this industry to foster this.

WARPIG: FPO Field Paint Only are three little words that can make or break an event's reputation. From a tournament producer's standpoint, requiring paint to be purchased at the field opens up better paint sponsorship opportunities, and revenue from paint sales help defray production costs lowering entry fees but it also can create a bad reputation if that sponsor delivers less than perfect paint, and even when it is perfect, FPO leaves room for losing teams to blame their problems on the paint and badmouth the producer. What are the good and bad sides you've seen by sticking with field paint only at your events? Having had your events criticized in the past for being field paint only, were you surprised by the lack of loud complaints when the NPPL and then PSP switched their rules to field paint only?

Debra: Let's face it - producing events is a business, just like any other. If the IAO hadn't been profitable for us, we would have spent our time doing other endeavors that were. The consumer ultimately wins by being able to attend a great event at a more affordable price than would be possible without sponsorship. When Cal Mag couldn't deliver an excellent paint, we were forced to switch out to a company that could! Zap came through for us for over a decade and then Draxxus for several years. Paintballs continued to develop over that time period to where it wasn't such an issue. Good Paint was almost guaranteed. Players would always find a reason they lost other than they just got beat. One excuse is as good as another: the refs, the paint, the barrel, the bad coin toss, the sun, the rain, the cheaters on the other team - there's a million of them. This first year creating a new Paintball Festival we will still have field paint only but there will be paint from a variety of manufacturers. We wanted to be totally inclusive as we try to create something helpful within the industry.

WARPIG: By the mid 1990s, it was simply a fact of life that if a paintball product or brand line was going to be launched, it was unveiled at the IAO usually first appearing in the new product showcase at the Industry Conference, then at the public trade show during the tournament, and some years at closed-door wholesale shows that were open only to field and store owners, and the press. For many years those industry shows were produced by Mike and John Henry, publishers of Paintball Player's Bible (which was later re-named to Paintbll2Xtremes). After their departure from paintball (I clearly remember the morning you called with that bit of news, too), you also produced the industry side of things under Team Effort Events' umbrella. What new directions did you take the industry oriented portions of the event?

Debra: I just took them back to a level playing field where everyone was welcome. Since I had no political agenda, they knew that I would try to offer a place for everyone to shine. The Henrys were very polarizing. I couldn't allow the industry conference - that was rooted in being open and fair to all industry members - to move in that direction. Then I tried to bring in expertise that the industry needed to hear from such as an expert Ophthalmologist about eye safety.

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