Stalking success

Oscar Cota provides the paintball fields, and families come

Playing a sport has always been fun for Oscar Cota, owner of local Cowtown Paintball, but it’s even better when that sport is how you earn your living.
Cowtown Paintball lies off of Carefree Highway. Here avid paint-ballers of all ages run, crawl, dodge, stalk and zero in on their quarry in the bunkers and obstacles.
 
“Paintball is a family sport and a positive way parents can be involved and active with their children,” Cota says. “Instead of sitting on the sidelines like in other sports, I wanted to find something that I could do alongside with my kids.”

And in addition to his own four sons, Cota has been taking neighborhood children under his wing for the past 12 years, and connecting them to the game.
In 1995, Cota visited an indoor paintball arena, and decided that was the sport of choice for him and his sons. Cota and his family became hooked and soon began playing competitive paintball. Then neighborhood kids began to tag along, and the love for the game grew.

“I would take my children and our paintball team all over the country competing in tournaments,” he says. “I had a rule where they had to show me their report cards and keep their grades up in order to play.”

That’s when Cota knew he had to have his own field. He started with a paintball field in South Phoenix on a pecan farm. He moved from that property about a year later.

Wanting to stay in South Phoenix, he moved to 43rd Ave and Broadway, where he rented land.

Meanwhile, he and his team, named the Bandidos, continued to tour, creating a buzz among the tournament industry.

Cota cranked up his entrepreneurial gears and opened his own paintball store on 19th Ave and Indian School. The store was a success.  However, Oscar had been presented with an additional opportunity.

“A competitor presented me with the offer to run his paintball field and organization...he ran a chain of paintball stores,” he says. “He ended up selling his share of the business, which gave me the opportunity to pick up the chains, now called Cowtown Paintball...”

Five years later, Cota continues to run a successful business and Cowtown Paintball is thriving and employs around 10 staff.

In addition to Cowtown, Cota also has a screen printing business, Phoenix Tee Shirts, housed out of his original paintball shop on 19th Ave. His accounts include the Arizona Cardinals, La Canasta and Arizona state prisons, he says.

But for Cota, it’s always been about the game.

“The kids that started paintball with me, it’s their little brothers and sisters that are now coming out...paintball enforces teamwork and teaches them how to interact with others.”

As for the future, Cota says he would like to expand into an indoor arena in the inner city to help kids keep out of trouble. 

“People who own paintball fields aren’t rich people, there’s lot of cost involved,” he says. “You have to love the sport and for me, it’s always been about keeping families together.”