Lots of history here, and many different paths it's taken. I started playing Quake in the spring of '97 when I purchased a markdown copy of Quake at a 7-11 for $2.50. (I swear! It was $10 the week before) So anyways, here I am learning how to DM on my Netcom connection, not doing too well... I tried various mods as I heard of them but that Summer I grabbed TF.
Before all this of course, I and my roomates would play DOOM till the wee hours of the morning and I would make DM maps for us to battle on with our elite network (null phone cord) so once I got a handle on Q's mlook, the skills transferred easy.
A working man, I didn't have time for clans, although I knew what they were...to me the tags always reminded me of the subs on Undernet wandering around looking for their masters *ahem* but back to the story... so I would normally play in the late evenings close to midnight for a couple of hours. Mainly I would play what many now know as the Demoman Spam Newbie...but really it was just poor aim, what I really got good at was pipe and gren jumps which I discovered on my own.
Around September I was going gung ho with my jumps high into the enemy fort and what I believe now was a clan member who mistook me for someone who really knew what he was doing (my usual goofing around) and invited me to tryout for a clan. I recently had lots of time freed up (free! yes, free!) and decided to give it a go.
The guy became probably my first friend in TF, he was [CG]Shooter of Clan Gangrene and somehow I got accepted as a member probably for maturity more than anything else. After a bit, an incredibly talented member discovered I had no real skill at demoman, this was a guy who later became a tf god to me, [CG]---8ball and he told me that I should take up engineering and proceeded to show me the basics of the craft.
So I embarked upon my career as basement eng in 2fort4, pretty much the only map going those days. I'd play usually a round a week which was cool for me, I loved spectating the big clan fights I'd only heard about on the radio or seen on tv...things got to rolling along, I played against CE and WM to name a few but after a while I was worrying about my skill level, especially when [CG] got a new home server that I pinged horrible on (600+) so I gathered my pride and sent my resignation a week before the DW2 championships.
Now mainly most of my experience was on the pubs as a defensive demoman laying secret pipe traps and hiding in corners. I got extremely good at that, but was always dog meat when confronted with a 1v1. I just couldn't aim the grenades worth crap at my ping. So when I picked up engineer, I got into habits of being very devious and using the talents I did have as demo which was hide a lot, rebuild the sentry always in new places, and learned how to build FAST without wasted energy and movement. The major server I was playing on had lots of lpb's at this time called SnowCrash TF which provided lots of practice and challenge. (without lpb's there would be a ton of hpb's who wouldn't be as good IMO)
December of '97 and I had been hanging out on the closest server to me (one with best ping too - 250) called Myriad's which was a local ISP in east Texas. I was in BFE myself and got to know the locals who hung around there. There were a few guys with these KiN tags I'd never heard of, and they say yah, we just wear em to find each other and so people won't try to recruit us (they all had cable and pinged like 40, you know how that goes....40 ping, no tag, tons of offers)... Staying there and playing these and other lpb's finally started me on a collection of good skills that allowed me to survive more and more till I was actually getting lots o' frags. I told the KiN leader Xodus that he should take me in since I was in Texas too and only like 150 miles from them and he said "well, ok". :)
So I joined a small local clan named The Kindred with a really great website and some very mature people in it who were around their mid-20's just ending or out of college. Some more locals were taken in and KiN started growing a bit and grew to a size where we felt comfortable entering in a tournament we had heard about called ITFL. We really all worked well together and I've never still seen an inspirational leader like Xodus who win or lose was always there to cheer us on, back us up, and heal our wounds. Our first match saw us get demolished by DLG on well6, and we disliked the map so much after that that we didn't play it again for half a year!
It was about this time too that I started getting into mapmaking. Bam4 had come out and it looked so fine, I just had to try my hand at it, and with my experience at DOOM2 mapmaking, it didn't prove too hard. Came out with a couple of small maps and my large one Xcaliber which had lots of little games in it to play if there were say only 4 or 6 people on the server. Got to know a guy named TresmeR too who ran the Myriad's server and all he loved was seeing people have fun on his baby and checking out any new map he could find. Life was grand, and the end of ITFL was coming near but we were to face our friendly nemesis' NC/NJ. But we got stoked, practiced hard, and devised a D to shut down their O scouts and won the american tourney of ITFL.
With KiN getting large and winning, I kept up practicing hard that summer of '98 getting very good at everything I tried. -eg- found me and I was accepted, then most of us broke off and founded -e- and it was around this time too that I got accused of cheating a lot. Heh, an hpb eng who can get in the top5 of a fraglist... mainly it was due to hard practice and long experience and I started getting very good in spite of the obstacles in my way (ping, packard bell comp).
Then Xodus graduated and lost his precious free time, so I took up the reigns of basically updating the news page. After an update, I figure out that he who controls communication controls all, and I used all the things I had quietly learned over the past year to further our winning streaks and leading the clan. Started hanging on msg boards and getting out in the TF community and knowing people and getting known.
And then a large part of KiN went inactive, enough so that we were getting thin and merged with our sister clan at the time among all the worries about what TF2 would do to TF1.
So through just two clans but around 8 leagues and tournies, I'm still doing what I love best now, and that's being a networker within the community... talking to people from all over, learning and sharing about the game we all love. I co-lead my wonderful clan of friends (which in its history has only had 2 people leave for other clans), currently help STA with map choices, recruit for -e- and do minor administrative stuff for, and keep learing the exiting world that is Tf strategy.
I've had a blast so far and there's no end in sight. I hope there's a lot of people out there as fortunate as I have been to get caught up in this game.