Video gamers unite

The competitiveness was in the air, players ready to defeat, all gamers nervous for their upcoming match, all striving to win the prize and bragging rights.

Three televisions and a projector lit up the room full of over 50 boys anxious to participate in the Super Smash Brothers  tournament held in Mod-5 on April 27 after school.  The hustle and bustle could be heard from outside as people kept piling in exceeding the expected amount of 20-30 participants.

Freshman Patrick Kelly first approached English teacher and coach David Friedman jokingly proposing the idea, but after seeing the slightest bit of interest, he decided to actually plan out and execute the whole tournament himself.

“First you have to get the sponsor, which was very easy, luckily and then you have to make a flyer and then you need a proposal to get the administrators’ approval,” Kelly said. “It was a long process, but in the end it went really well.”

Friedman was on board with the whole idea confessing that he was an avid video gamer himself while in high school. He agreed to sponsor the event to make sure things went smoothly and to get a chance to interact with students after school hours.

“I think it’s cool to see kids in a different light than what you do in the academics, and that’s also one of the reasons I like coaching,” Friedman said. “You get to see kids on a personal level and sometimes when kids see that kind of thing happening, then they are more willing to work in class because they understand that you’re a human outside of the classroom.”

Freshman Lucas Brennan decided to register into the tournament after hearing about the prizes.

“My friends were playing it and I wanted to make some extra money,” Brennan said. “There is a $50 first prize, a $30 second, a $10 third.”

In order to entice students to participate Kelly paid for these Best Buy gift cards himself. But with 52 people registered to play chances to earn these prizes became smaller than originally expected.

“I was just expecting like 20-30 people, like just me and my friends, and a whole bunch of people I’d never met before showed up, so that was pretty cool,” Kelly said.

All 52 participants were males with only two girls acting as spectators. Males from all grade levels and all levels of skills came together to play.

“I only found out about it right after the bell rang and someone yelled in my ear ‘there’s a super smash brothers tournament’ and I have nothing to lose,” junior John Hailey said. “I’m not really that good. I used to be good when I was like 10 or so when I used to play the game avidly, now I’m just not a gamer.”

Finally the tournament came to an end almost at 7 p.m. with founder Patrick Kelly winning first place, freshman Winston Bryda winning second and Charlie Tucker winning third.

“I thought a lot more people would do better than me,” Tucker said. “it was more about the bragging rights other than winning the $10 gift card.”

Although only three got to win cash prizes, students still enjoyed the chance to have some spontaneous video game fun after school.

“I think it’s pretty cool that the school and Mr. Freidman agreed to do this in his room,” sophomore Wesley Coleman said. “Regardless of whether there were prizes or not, I’d probably still do it, it’s a pretty cool experience.”

Kelly reassured that he would definitely be planning to do more video game tournaments at the school later on in his sophomore year but would go about it with a few changes.

“We wouldn’t make the whole thing double elimination because that took too long,” Kelly said. “So we’d change the bracket so we could do single elimination first and then double elimination for the final 15 or so.”

Games, tournament Features, Online