DJ La Tona on Wolfpack and Who Are Those Guys Paintball Teams in the 1980s

Recently DJ La Tona, a member of the Southern California teams Wolfpack and "Who Are Those Guys and That Gal Mercenary Service", emailed me with a great photo from about 1986-87.
The photo showed DJ holding up and a rattlesnake he had blasted with his Frank Gun at Hopetown / Tactics in Simi Valley during a game against the Kamikaze Shooters.
DJ and I emailed back and forth and then met up to record this video on his paintball history.
In the interview we discuss DJ's start in paintball, at Quest in Malibu.
DJ started just before his 18th birthday in 1985 and really got into it. He played regularly, getting to know the locals at the historic Malibu Quest field, and making friends with many of them including Johnny Barber, Joe Voss, Jessica Sparks, Bill Matthews, Joe Comstock, Danny and Lanny Lambert and many others.
Around the time DJ started at Quest in Malbu, the field was run by Johnny and Joe and had not yet switched over to David and Dawn Bassman as Conquest.
DJ played regularly, starting with a stock PGP, and then moving to another Sheridan before joining the Wolfpack and getting one of the team's Frank Guns.
Frank Postle's Frank Gun represented a breakthrough in paintball marker technoledgey, as the first purpose built direct feed pump gun. Supposedly around 30 of these steel barreled markers were made in 1986 and the majority went to Wolfpack team members or Quest locals.
DJ explains that the Wolfpack was very protective of their Frank Guns, which, at the time, in 1986, gave the team a clear advantage over the competition.
During this period, the competition in Southern California paintball was some of the most brutal and Wolfpack's strategy, skilled players and superior tech led them to become one of, if not the most dominant teams in 1986-1988. In 1987 and 1988 they took first at the Sat Cong Village Challenge Cup, which pitted Southern California's top teams against each other.
This would be the same period that Navarone really rose to the top nationally with their Nelspots and then Line SI Bushmasters and DJ dicsusses some details of the bad blood between the two teams.
DJ also goes on to talk about other top Southern California teams of the time including Sudden Death captained by Dave Bassman, Kamikaze Shooters captained by Mark Torabayashi (who took 2nd after Wolfpack in the Challenge Cup) and Havok captained by Joe Comstock (which was Youngbloods first team and later merged into Sudden Death).
Huge thanks to DJ for meeting up with me and re living some of his old memories.
Find more history at htttps://paintballhistory.com

[@somebrains5431]

Burritos after playing. That’s how we know.

[@silly6004]

Oh man, great story. Brings back old times.

[@neilsummers78]

Good to see this. I played north of DJ from '82 to '85. Our home field was Woodstalk in San Jose. Bill Bowers ran that field. Our team was The Buckaroos. The Buckaroos was started by a group of guys from Atari in Sunnyvale Ca. My Original team was the Boogiemen from Raychem Corp. I left the Boogiemen and joined the Buckaroos in the fall of 1983. We often traveled to tournaments with The Killer Bees. Another very good team in the area was the Screaming Eagles. We went to the NSG national championship twice in '83 and '84. The Buckaroos were the first team at the national level to have a woman on the team. She played in both the '83 and '84 National Championships and all the tourneys that lead up to it. A very good player. It's been a while so I don't remember a lot of names. Unfortunately, we landed in 2nd place both years. Team Canada won in '83 and a team from Atlanta won in '84. I stopped playing in '85... new daddy and all. That was at the same time the (ill conceived) plastic Splatmaster came out. It's nice to hear how things developed since then. Good stuff. I've been back to the field a few times but the game turned into a superior firepower game on much smaller fields and much less of a stealthy, strategic game. ... and I got old. Another little nugget. The Boogiemen were the 1st team to wear face masks and the only team at the national championships wearing them in '84. No more split lips. Bill Bowers found a manufacturer in Europe who made an olive drab moto cross masks and he imported them to sell at his field. .

[@comrademoon]

what a cool guy, cool to hear the history of the game. Thanks for this

[@rogerlopez4808]

I played with So. Cal Wolfpack out of SC Village, later out of Jungle Island, the majority of us were from the I.E.

[@claytonwinter374]

I want to know the rage situation with the other guy...

[@acccs659]

I remember reading a paintball magazine back in the late 80’s or early 90’s regarding a tournament where a team called “Nazi Death Mercenaries from Hell” had been disqualified for cheating during the tournament by using super absorbent cleaning cloths when getting hit, and having tools to alter the speed of paintballs beyond allowable limits, etc. That article always stuck in my head, anybody know what happened to that team?