The athlete's skills and psychological state often influence success in sports performance. The current study aims to explain the performance in paintball competitions based on cognitive resilience and cognitive regulation of emotion. The study participants included all paintball players participating in national paintball competitions (the year 2022), including 17 teams of 7 players, a total of 116 people. In order to investigate the psychological components affecting the athletes' performance, Conner-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) were used. After completing these questionnaires, IBM SPSS Statistics version 26 was used to analyze the data. Pearson's correlation coefficient and stepwise regression were used to analyze the data. The results showed a significant relationship between resilience scores, the overall score of cognitive emotion regulation, and the scores of 9 emotion regulation strategies with the players' performance in the paintball competition (P≤0.05). Players who achieved better results in tournaments, scored higher on the resilience factor. Also, players who achieved better results in matches had higher scores on emotion regulation strategies like self-blame, positive refocusing, refocus on planning, positive reappraisal, and putting into perspective, and lower scores on the acceptance, rumination, catastrophizing and other-blame strategies. This study showed that cognitive resilience and emotion regulation could be used as predictors of success and winning positions in paintball competitions.
