Venture Games -The Lost Boys

The Lost Boys, captained by Bob Stear, was a group of Bay Area friends, most of them sharing a tech background and a love of paintball. At first sight they weren't very impressive, being beat by the likes of the Little Rascals; who were at that time our number one team at our field. My first impression of them faded as they quickly took knowledge of our terrain and adjusted their tactics and quickly beat out all others. At that time, circa 1988, they were still a great group of recreational players.
That all started to changed after the wife of one player had an affair with one of the other team members. Needless to say, nothing good can come out of that between a group of close friends.

Unfortunately this happened right before the 1st game of the Diablo Cup tournament; naturally that event was canceled. Shortly after that they re-grouped and took the 1st Diablo Cup, including every major one of our events between 1988 and 1991.

Their most impressive victory ironically was their last on Diablo. On November 29th of 1992, Bob Stear and 4 other team members with 1 Automag, 1 Illustrator and 3 VM68 rental’s did the impossible and pulled a come from behind victory to take Diablo Cup 10, their record 5th cup in 4 years.

They made another attempt for the Diablo Cup 12 on June 6 1993 but did not even place in the finals. There were some problems during that event with Jeff Orthman and Jim Kelly, nothing big but they took it personal, so that was the last time I saw the Lost Boys.

But in an ironic twist to the Lost Boys story, a couple of them still play paintball. The sad part is they are friends and play with the infamous carpet Bob of paintball jungle. A guy that not only got kicked out by me in 1988 for cheating and drug use, Bob Long kicked him out of the Ironmen and a very young Lost Boys team had enough of him as well. Despite the last revelations to the Lost Boys story, I still have deep feelings for them and the golden years of paintball on Diablo.