Tri-Tag Tournament: Laser Quest Potomac Mills

It was sort of a last minute decision for me to enter the Tri-Tag Weekend laser tag tournament. Although there were events for Tron and tactical competition I decided that I would only choose to participate in the Quest portion of the weekend which was to run from 11:00 PM on Saturday night through about 3 AM on Sunday morning and then I would head back home. Eight hours of driving each way was still totally worth it to have the experience playing against some actual Quest players! However, my team had a slightly different make-up. I played with a free agent team (that I affectionately refer to as the "Free Agents" of SHIELD) with Logan (a Storm player), Andrew (a Tron player), me (a Zone player) and JJ who actually is a Quest player from Hawaii. He does have 18 years of experience, so it was good to have a Quest veteran with us.

There was a great deal that I learned from this experience and I am glad that I opted to go. However, we were a far cry from being top performers here. I think the fact that most of our team had our primary experience with other systems was a big part of it. As I related after the fact, it was like if you took state titleholders from MAOT, DYW, an interview queen or even the Dairy Princess program and put them into a glitz Pro-Am competition and then wonder why the results were different. Different strengths, yet so much to gain from the process of doing. My small personal victories were that I was generally the highest placing of the non-Quest players on my team (which is a little like saying I was the second to last person off the Titanic), and in certain rounds I was pleasantly surprised by some of the company I kept on the scoreboard, but I can honestly say the learning experience came mostly from just accepting my place here and trying to pick up tips from the experienced Quest players. I was sort of heartened to see that the only other woman in this arm of the tournament ended up being the overall winner (as well as being on the top team). And I appreciated the effort that went into pulling this event off. Although it ended up going a little longer than expected (we were there until 4AM) I want to thank Dice for putting it all together and commend him on a fun and worthwhile event. And a shout out to my teammates...