PaintballX3 Magazine August 2014 Issue | Page 49

49 Kirk,” said yes to JJ Brookshire’s request to hold a Star Trek themed big game. The event brought tons of publicity to paintball from the “outside” world, including another celebrity who played the game with him, “Mancow.” Josh Silverman Josh has been involved in virtually every aspect of paintball since 1993. In addition to playing paintball for 17 years, Josh has managed paintball pro-shops and fields, he’s taken some of the best and most wellknown photographs in the game, written for practically every magazine in paintball, was the Assistant Editor at Paintball 2Xtremes, the Associate Editor of Paintball Games International and now holds the Associate Editor position at Paintball X3 in addition to being a feature writer for the Paintball Business Journal. For several years Josh helped promote the largest and most famous regional tournament series in the world, the CFOA, with founder Larry Motes. He co-authored the Field Owner’s Survival Guide with John Amodea, has consulted for several paintball companies and he continues to be a very influential insider in the game of paintball today. John Sosta, Jackie Sosta, and John Bonich John Sosta has been credited by many as engineering the first electronic paintball marker in 1991, when he designed a gun for his then teammate (UK Predators) who had a broken wrist and couldn’t pump the gun. Both Sosta and Bonich did a lot with the Automag in the early 90s as well in Europe. And they introduced the new Formula 5 format to tournament paintball. Jackie was the business manager for John Sosta and Bonich and she went on to run NPS Europe which developed into KEE Europe. She is a very influential business woman in European paintball. Jessica Sparks One of the great women of paintball, Jessica Sparks has devoted her life to the game, contributed to it and helped it grow in many ways. From her time with the NRA to her tenure as the editor of what was, at the time, the most popular and best-known magazine of paintball sports in the world, Action Pursuit Games, Sparks helped put a respectable and legitimate face on the entire paintball world in the eyes of the larger, non-playing public and influenced how countless thousands learned the game of paintball through her time at APG, all while proving that paintball is a game men and women can enjoy equally. Jessica’s pink VM-68 Magnum paintball gun was, at last report, housed in the National Firearms Museum. josh Silverman Joh