[J.A]Clan History Page

History

by Chris Dart

One day a long time ago in calculus class at Big Rapids High, Paul Schmidt started talking about Counter-Strike (the game he was addicted to). After talking, he discovered a few of his friends also played. Knowing this, Paul, along with Greg Stoike and Chris Fisher, had an idea to start a Counter-Strike clan. Things started out slow, but through talking about it during lunch, and random conversations in gym class, word spread. Soon a small group played under the tag [J.A]. [J.A] started out as a temporary name; just until they had figured out what they wanted. As we all know, it evolved into our permanent name. [J.A]'s first meaning was Jim Alex, an alter ego/name that Greg had. We all agreed this was not going to last long, and we then set in plans to come up with another meaning. Through long deliberation and a large assortment of random words, we decided on Jews of America. This was mostly an inside joke and was just for fun. No one in the clan was Jewish, but they all played with the tag anyways.

After playing for a month or so, the [J.A] group put there resources together and came up with a server. The first server was ran and maintained by Chris Dart. Was online only temporarily and could only host about six people. This worked, but would not suffice for long. Within a few months word had spread, especially to other friends who also wanted into [J.A]. With the increase in members, something had to be done. At the time, a majority of the clan could not play together at the same time, so a move had to be made. The server, which was located at Chris Dart's house, was moved to Greg Stoike's house. Greg had a higher upload and a more reliable connection. Hosting the server at Greg's gave [J.A] the capability of hosting around 10-12 people locally. Around the same time of the server move [J.A] started there first website. This was ran and maintained by Greg Stoike. It was hosted by www.geocities.com. This was also a temporary idea, which soon proved to not be a viable solution. The mere 50mb of space and constant pop-up's proved to be and annoyance and not worth the time.

They then entered a counter-strike league. CAL was the name of this league. They soon realized that playing competitively was not as fun as just playing. And there CAL season ended short. The server was hosted at Greg's house for several months. During this time, Greg bought his own web space and started the website, www.clanja.com. Due to difficulties, www.clanja.net is now our current domain. Greg now currently maintains and supports www.clanja.net on his own with little help.

In May of 2004, everyone that was a member of clan [J.A] graduated. All knowing that summertime and open houses would keep us all busy, we tried to play occasionally. We stayed in contact through Messenger and on forums. In August of 2004, plans were made and actions were set in. Majority of [J.A] moved from Big Rapids and started there college career's.

Chris Dart who owned the majority of the server at the time had made plans to take the server to his apartment in Grand Rapids. His upload speed exceeded Greg's making it a better solution to there growing needs. While getting settled in and getting into there college life's many [J.A] members started to be more active. Greg and Chris who had pieced together there make shift Counter-Strike server decided it was time for a server upgrade. There server was bottle necked from CPU performance. So a major decision was made. Greg invested money and bought a new motherboard and a new stick of memory for the server. Chris provided the new processor. After about a month Chris Dart, Dave Schaub, Chris Fisher and Greg Stoike put together money and bought another stick of memory for there server. This upgrade gave [J.A] unlimited possibilities. Only thing holding them back now was Bandwidth.

After a few months of the server being hosted at Chris Dart's apartment, another decision was made. Greg Stoike looked into hosting our server at a local gaming center in Big Rapids (www.area51-igc.com). [J.A] was somewhat familiar with the owners and getting information was not a problem. Through deliberations and talk, a decision to move the server was made. Greg Stoike, being very generous, initially offered to pay the first 2 months of rack space. Since the server move clan [J.A] has grown and expanded.

Another decision to change the name was made because of the growth and not wanting to offend anyone. Therefore, [J.A] entered the name creation phase again. Not wanting to change our tag, we stayed with [J.A]. This narrowed down our choices by a lot. After forum discussion and conversations, a member by the name of Shawn Botma, came up with the name Just Americans. The popularity of this name within the clan was apparent and it became the new meaning of [J.A].

Recently [J.A] added another division to there clan,]J.A[, standing for outsiders. Since [J.A] started as a group of friends they wanted to keep the personal aspect but allow other people to join there clan as well. To date the roster has been modify and members have been added.

[J.A] runs live stats for both their 24/7 Counter-Strike Servers. [J.A] has been active locally, hosting LAN parties and attending local tournaments. [J.A] clan is a Gaming Community and supports playing video games professionally. For more information, please contact us through e-mail or post on our forums.