The Penn State Paintball Association's hope of ranking first in the X-Ball division of the National Collegiate Paintball Championship was shot down Saturday, after its varsity team lost to Florida State University.

"What it comes down to is that they were just better than us," Varsity Coach Rob Rivera (senior-English) said. "There was an obvious difference in skills."

Down 4-0 within the first 10 minutes of the game, Penn State was able to come back with three points only a minute later, varsity team member Kate Renner (senior-media studies) said. But, it wasn't enough, as Penn State lost, 10-6.

"We continued to duke it out with them, but it just didn't go our way," she said. "They were able to out-gun us every time."

Penn State ranked fifth out of the six collegiate teams from across the nation that competed in the single-elimination Class A, or X-Ball division of the tournament, held this weekend at Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando.

The University of Illinois won the division after beating Florida State 9-6 in the finals.

Penn State's 12-member varsity team was initially set to play its first X-Ball match yesterday in the semifinals, because it was allowed to bypass the quarterfinals Saturday after placing first in the Northeast Conference.

However, Rivera said the team had to compete Saturday in the quarterfinals after the National Collegiate Paintball Association (NCPA) rescheduled the tournament, because Purdue University didn't show up.

"They made us play in the first round," he said. "It was kinda different from what we thought."

Florida State was not initially scheduled to compete in the Class A division, Rivera said.

"They filled some other team's spot, which kinda sucks, but they're a good team, so why not let them play?" he said.

Penn State's varsity team is one level of the Penn State Paintball Association -- a university club of about 40 students, who also compete at the recreational and junior varsity level.

The varsity team has traveled to nationals for the past three years to compete in the traditional Class AA, or five-man-style paintball, ranking within the top three teams in the division each year.

This year, however, the group's goal was to win the newly developing X-Ball paintball division, which major sports and television industries are promoting nationwide. Both mtvU and College Sports TV plan on airing this weekend's competition in mid-June.

Although the players' main focus was Class A, two five-member teams also competed in the eight-game Class AA competition, starting at the preliminary round on Saturday because of their sixth-place standing in the NCPA.

While one of the teams did not move on, after winning only two of the eight games, the other team advanced to the semi-finals yesterday with a 5-3 record.

"We did pretty decent," Varsity Captain Jamieson Lash (freshman-division of undergraduate studies) said. "The teams we were playing in five-man weren't as competitive as the teams we were playing in X-Ball."

However, yesterday's match proved more of a challenge to the team, which lost all three of their semifinal matches.

After losing to Arizona State University and St. Mary's University of Minnesota, Lash said the players purposely lost to the University of Connecticut, because they knew they wouldn't qualify for the finals.

"We just messed around so they could win and make it to the finals," he said. "All the Northeast teams are pretty tight, so we try to help each other out as much as we can."

Arizona State won the division after beating Connecticut in the finals. Penn State finished eighth out of 65 teams competing in the NCPA Class AA division.