Paintball is making its mark

BROCKTON -- The sound of machine-gun fire -- or is that popcorn popping? -- thunders over the Brockton Fairgrounds Racetrack. Squads of men storm the field. They're armed, ready, and dressed for paintball.

"Cover me!" one player shouts, diving behind an inflatable barrier as shots whiz by.

Splat!

By the end of the match, orange and pink blotches cover the guys from head to toe.

Flying colors are the norm at this weekend's National Professional Paintball League tournament. Paintball players dressed in SWAT-style gear chase one another while toting air guns loaded with paint-filled pellets.

Get shot and you lose.

About 150 teams from all over the country have descended on Brockton to leave their marks on one another and on an extreme sport that has become extremely popular. The top prize is $25,000; in all, $90,000 in prize money will be given to the top-scoring teams this weekend. The tournament is free and open to the public.

Paintball combines the techniques and strategies of hunting, hide-and-seek, and capture-the-flag. It is a $200 million industry with more than 10 million adherents in the United States. "It's a fun sport that anyone can play," says Chuck Hendsch , a vice president at JT Sports , one of the event's main sponsors. He's also the former president of the National Professional Paintball League, which has 3,800 members. "It's a first-person shooter game, similar to a video game. You are re - creating playing a video game."

The sport has gotten so popular that ESPN2 covered the US Paintball Championship last summer. Recent movies such as "Knocked Up" and "Failure to Launch" featured characters firing away at each other. Commercials for Sprite celebrate the sport. Fox Sports Net, which is covering the Brockton tournament this weekend, plans to air a docudrama about the sport this fall. Even Captain Kirk is a fan -- William Shat- ner produced a DVD called "Spplat Attack," in which he and his army of troops attack aliens with paintball guns.

Corey Nelson, 23, traveled to Brockton from Texas to compete with his paintball team, the Dallas Storm. After winning a match yesterday, Nelson stood on the outskirts of the field to check out the competition. He was still wearing the other team's pellets. "On TV, you can't see where they are shooting. It's starting to get more recognition."

Paintball is more about strategy than physical prowess, and players say the chance of injury is low because the pellets dissolve upon impact. Some competitors receive welts if they're shot at close range, but they say that is of no consequence.

"It's a big adrenaline rush," says Jacob Nogas , 15, as he came off the field after a match. He's become such a fan of the sport that he talked his father into driving him down to Brockton from their home in Ontario so he could compete and check out the trade show of equipment.

"It's fast," he says. "You get to shoot people."

Locally, players practice at paintball clubs from Lawrence to the Cape. Boston Paintball in Somerville sponsors one-day tournaments for avid players through the New England Paintball League. At least 30 New England teams are competing this weekend in Brockton.

Paintball guns -- or markers -- were originally used to mark trees and cattle. In 1981, a group of young men used them in a game of capture the flag in New Hampshire, and paintball was born. The game took off from there, spreading nationally with formal fields, indoors and outdoors.

Players use small, round gelatin-capsules with colored liquid or vegetable gel inside. Two teams try to capture each other's flag as they evade shots fired by the opposing players. The number of players varies, but it's usually seven per team. A match typically lasts seven minutes.

"It's chess on your feet," says Shane McCabe, 22, taking a breather after playing two matches yesterday morning with his team, the Saratoga Assassins.

"It's very strategic," he says. "You have to remember all the angles and the blind spots. You have to communicate with each other as a team. It's more real than a video game."

Johnny Diaz can be reached at jodiaz@globe.com.