Pablo "Krusty" Gaviolli Argentina's Moonwalkers bring speedball to their country! By Tania A.B. Huamani Pablo "Krusty" Gavioli, 25, is one of Argentina's most enthusiastic speedball players. In Argentina, paintball began as "war games in the woods"--Krusty first heard of paintball while watching a scenario game program on TV back in 2001. A couple of months later he joined some guys that played paintball a few kilometers from his home and instantly became a paintball addict. Though he's not a pro player, at least not yet, Krusty is the kind of player pro scouts will notice. I've had email contact with Krusty since he started playing. At the Dean Funes 2004 big game, Operacion Mercurio, I had the pleasure of meeting this extremely courteous player, who seems to be always in a good mood. I must confess I was disapointed when I found out his skin was not yellow and his hair was not green.... At the Dean Funes game, many Argentinean players first saw the high tech markers of the players from the Mercenários (Brazil) and Sombra (Chile), and heard about inflatables. All this left Krusty really curious, and after watching a lot of videos and reading international magazines he "found out that Argentina was many years behind the rest of the paintball world" as he put it, and that if they wanted to be able to reach some tournament level one day, they'd better start practicing immediately. Krusty joined team Moonwalkers. One of that team's players is Sebastian "Autococonut" Martinez, a man familiar with Sup'Air Ball fields. Moonwalkers is a new and daring team. Recently Autococonut (Coquito, for friends) bought a Sup'Air Ball field---the first in his country. This helped Moonwalkers on their big leap to speedbal competition. Even that was not enough for the restless Krusty. He was determined to come to Brazil in September even if only to watch the Brazilian Championship. I then told him I could find him a team to play with so that he could actually feel the thrill of the fast games, but then he slowly talked his teammates into thinking less about money and more about fun, thus the Moonwalkers came down to Planet Earth, landing in Brazil to play in the Brazilian Championship in the Novice division. October '04 saw the first speedball tournament in Argentina with teams from Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. Mercenarios from Brazil won, with Chilean teams Barracuda and Seleccion in second and third places. Among the Argentinean teams the Moonwalkers were first, proving the value of hard work and determination are very good weapons as they defeated Argentina's favorite, Escoriones, twice in that tournament. The first Sup'Air field in Argentina, 300 FPS, belongs to Krusty and his team mates. They are concentrating all their efforts to get to what Krusty calls "a high competitive level"--on the road to becoming pro-level players. Knowing how determinated and passionate Krusty is, I have no doubt team Moonwalkers will soon mark their presence in the world's most important tournaments, making Krusty's dream come true: showing that Argentina has come to stay! It is such players as Krusty that go on to become pros. Tania A.B. Huamani writes from Brazil and is a key figure in bringing competition paintball to South America.