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Season 3 Exhibition Tournament Preview

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HighSchoolStarleague 79 Posts September 29 2013 19:08 GMT #1 About the High School Starleague:       The High School Starleague (HSL; Formerly HSSTL), has been in operation since 2010. The HSL provides high school students with a competitive, team-oriented, fun and rewarding experience, similar to traditional sports. Our dream is to make eSports just as respected as traditional sports, so that a high school can support and promote eSports teams. The HSL is currently heading into its 3rd Season for Starcraft 2. The deadline for entry tentatively closes on October 8th, 2013 - so there is still time to enter! You can find more information about the HSL, how to enter the 3rd season, and a link to the stream for the event below. Find us at: Our Home/Main Website Our SC2 Website Our Facebook Our Twitch Channel Our Twitter Our Youtube Our Liquipedia entry       The High School Starleague’s SC2 Season 3 Exhibition Tournament will start on Monday, Sep 30 1:00am GMT (GMT+00:00). It will consist of four players: ROOT.Arium, SCA.Astrea, iS.Sanddbox, and EG.Xenocider. The semifinals will be a Bo5 and the finals will be a Bo7. The map pool consists of: Akilon Wastes, Bel’Shir Vestige, Whirlwind (All spawns.), Polar Night, Yeonsu, Frost, and Fruitland. More information about the rules, structure, and format of the tournament can be found here. EG.Xenocider       Possibly the most well known of all of the players, Libo “Xenocider” Chang is a sixteen year old Terran player who plays for the highly-acclaimed team Evil Geniuses. Xenocider largely participated in only online tournaments in WoL, with the exception of the MLG Summer Arena qualifiers where he defeated HuK but was later eliminated by Golden. In HotS, Xenocider qualified for Season 1 of the WCS NA Challenger League; however, he was quickly eliminated from his two group stages. Xenocider plays a very defensive macro style of play, preferring to win a longer game and is probably the crowd favorite to win the event this weekend. iS.Sanddbox       Our first of two players from Torrey Pines High School (TPHS), Ryan “Sanddbox” Kemper is a seventeen year old Zerg player for Infinity Seven. He is the youngest player on Infinity Seven’s active roster. He has made several tournament appearances including defeating GSL Code A player GGanDoL in IPL:TAC 3, and defeating both EG's DeMusliM and EG's LzGaMeR 2-0 in the open bracket of MLG Anaheim. Sanddbox is likely hoping to assist in carrying his team to another back to back HSL championship and winning this tournament would be a great step towards that. SCA.Astrea       The second of our two players from TPHS, Max “Astrea” Angel is a Protoss player for Team.SCA. Astrea is one of the youngest GM’s on the NA server and is known for having very creative strategies. He has won two ZOTAC Cups and a Playhem Daily in WoL. At the end of WoL he was ranked #4 in the NA GM ladder. He also was featured in IPL’s Play of the Day on February 5th, 2013. Astrea is a very unpredictable player who could very well bring some interesting builds and strategies to his matches! SEED.Arium       Our final player, Samson “Arium” Nazaryan is a fourteen year old Protoss player who recently joined ROOT’s gaming academy. Arium is the youngest player to ever become a GM in SC2, which he achieved at the age of thirteen. Arium played his first live WoL tournament at the age of twelve in the SoCal eSports LAN Circuit, where he was eliminated in 9-12th place. In HotS he has had much greater success, including beating multiple pros and a main stage match at MLG Spring Championship 2013. ESFI did an interview with Arium while at MLG, which you can view here. Arium is certainly a solid player and should not be underestimated in today’s matches. Author Predictions: Semifinals: SCA.Astrea 3:2 EG.Xenocider       Astrea is definitely considered the underdog in this matchup. But, I believe that he can bring some interesting strategies against Xenocider to force him to play safer than he would usually. I’m especially excited to see this matchup and I will be cheering for Astrea. If Astrea can take a quick game early on in the series, or show Xenocider that he isn’t afraid to be aggressive, he can play off of that cautiousness for the rest of the series and take additional risks. Semifinals: iS.Sanddbox 3:1 SEED.Arium       I had a hard time choosing a winner for this match, but Sanddbox gets the edge here due to his extended experience with high level matches. He has repeatedly shown that he can defeat top players in stressful tournaments. While I'm choosing Sanddbox, I think Ariumcould very well take this match. Brace yourselves for a close series. Finals: SCA.Astrea 3:1 iS.Sanddbox       Reread my predictions for Astrea vs Xenocider, except replace Xenocider with Sanddbox. Also, because Astrea and Sanddbox are both from TPHS, expect a lot of mindgames. If I’ve called the finals correctly, you may get to see the grudge match deciding who the best player for TPHS is. It will definitely be a great final match regardless of who wins in the semifinals.       -Joey “Varanice” is a diamond zerg player on NA and is playing in the 3rd Season of HSL for the DCHS/UAHS team. He recently has taken up writing articles for the HSL. :D

Varanice United States1517 Posts September 29 2013 19:36 GMT #2 Woo. :D HSL hypetrain gogo

Varanice United States1517 Posts September 30 2013 00:24 GMT #3 We're going live now.

KaiserKieran United States615 Posts September 30 2013 02:50 GMT #4 Looks great! I'd tune in but I have high school tomorrow!!! The irony!

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