Paintball Field Review: Liberty Paintball, in Patterson, New York
     -by Evan Shlom, Westchester Rise

If you live anywhere near the southern region of New York, then visiting Liberty Paintball for a day of fun is a must.  This park mostly caters to woodsball, but they also have a speedball field, too.  Speedball games are limited at this field until, or on days they have a minimum of 10 players. 

The owner tends to be a little grouchy, but the refs are awesome.  Some of them are so chill that you’d think they’re hippies that play paintball.  There was one woodsball match that I played in where one of the refs got shot by a TPX pistol from about 30 feet away; after he got over the initial sting, he just laughed and went on.  Some of the refs even give in-game pointers to the players to help keep the game going.  The refs at Liberty Paintball aren’t scared to run through the field to give a paint-check.  One of the annoying things about the refs though is that they tend to get distracted by talking to each other during game-breaks, which makes the wait longer to buy more paintballs and get tank refills.  Another frustrating thing the refs do is… during a capture the flag game, when a player takes one of the flags, the refs feel the need to run beside you the whole time you’re carrying the flag, noisily breaking your stealthy endeavors.  This can also negatively impact your team’s ability to capturing a flag.  Overall, the refs are pretty cool at this park and make it a point to make sure you have a good time.  One time at Liberty, a ref gave me a free CO2 refill after the last game of the day.  But out of nowhere, the owner came over and scolded the generous ref, then went out of his way to bleed all of the CO2 out of my tank, including the fraction of CO2 that was in there before I got the extra refill.

There is actual plumbing in Liberty Paintball, resulting in real bathrooms, sinks, and a clean water fountain with plastic cups, too.  The main building also has a self-refill station for CO2; this is very convenient.  The paintball cases cost $70.00 each.  The admission fee is $25.00 a person and an extra five dollars if you plan on using rental-equipment.  You can also pay $5.00 for a camo jump-suit, and $5.00 for a pod harness that normally comes with two 100-round pods in it.  There is also a small grilled food counter, where you can get burgers, hot dogs, barbequed chicken, and some other foods for decent prices.

Liberty Paintball has around ten fields altogether, each one requiring various strategies, teamwork and communication - making playing in each one all the more fun.  During the weekends, the teams can add up to fifty on fifty games.  In many situations, one team has many more experienced and high-tech players than the other, but if the games begin to end very fast, the refs are usually smart enough to switch around with the teams so it’s  more fair.  Liberty makes improvements to their fields frequently too, so if you play there a lot, it will still never get boring for you.