Laser Tag

Last night I participated in the SACA event in the LBJ Ballroom. On September 9th SACA was hosting a laser tag event that started at 7pm and ended at 10pm, and it seemed like everyone showed up right at 7! My friend Ashley and I got in line around 7:20 and went in for our first round of it at 7:40.

Now when I say laser tag, I'm not talking about the light weight, long guns and heavy vests kind. Last night was a HALO-style, mildly heavy, thick gun with reloading and head shots from the headbands with sensors we wore. Which were the only sensors besides the one on our gun! It was very hardcore and reminded me a lot of paintball since we were all running around as fast as we could, sliding, rolling and skidding into hiding places.

My friend Ashley headed back to her dorm after her third game around 8:20, but I stayed and continued to play until they closed it down at 10 o'clock! In fact, by about 8:50, there wasn't even a line really anymore, it was just the same 30 people playing over and over again!

I met a lot of people by staying like I did, and by the time to close up came around, we were all having so much fun we kept begging for 'one more game' because even though we were all exhausted and covered in sweat and bruised knees, we did not want to stop. We were having that much fun! Not just with the laser tag itself but with all the different types of games between two teams.

We played one game called Medic, where you have 4 lives and when you lost that last life the person on your team designated as the 'medic' would have to run over to you and revive you. But if the medic died then you couldn't revive and the side that had the last person standing won. We did another game that had this big glowing cube that you had to run out from under cover to and hold your team's button down and change it to your team's color without dying in the process as the other team unmercifully opened fire on you. As long as the cube was your team's color you racked up points and the team with the most points at the end won.

And then we had a game called Death Match, which was the one we did the last few times we played. Death Match was like Medic, but without having a Medic. You were given eight lives, and the last person/team standing won. During the very last game we played I acted as the sniper for my team and stayed in the back, slowly picking off people from the other team if they tried to come to me or if they poked their head out of their base. (And several times acting as a distraction as my team members ran forward and tried to close in on their base.) By the end of that game it was just me on my team and one person left on the other team. Unfortunately I ran out of ammo right when they charged at me so we lost. But even though I lost half the games I played, every single one was incredibly enjoyable and I will be there again when the laser tag group comes back in a few months.

I am so glad that I went to this event, I met so many people and we all were just having a great time, even when we did lose it didn't mean that the game we had played wasn't fun. We were all serious about it too though, we were working together and coming up with strategies, (even if some of those strategies involved suicide running straight at the enemy base or the cube in a group) and it was just an incredible experience. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

By the time I came back to my dorm room at 10pm I was happy but exhausted, and slightly regretting that I had done the entire thing in flip flops. My knees were red and sore from constantly bending down, squatting, and kneeling and I was soaked with sweat from the intense workout. I had one broken nail on my toe from a time I attempted to get to the cube in one game and really wanted to sit down and give my sore legs a break by the time I got back. As I am typing this now the morning after, my legs are still sore and walking up and down stairs hurts, and my right hand is so sore from holding the gun and pulling the trigger that I had to be careful while writing notes in chemistry.

But even with the post workout pain I am still feeling, I would still do it again right now if I could, no questions asked.