Flow control?

In our prototyping tests we could not get cylinders to extend quickly enough to provide enough force to launch the ball very far, but we've seen videos of teams launching well over the truss using a single cylinder. While we don't have the most experience with pneumatics, we believe this is due to the lack of an adequate air flow rate to the cylinder. If you've successfully launched a ball with cylinders, what did you do to get enough air flow?