HoaS Chapter III: Our First Tournaments

After creating a Smashboards thread about our first planned tournament, we were pleased with the amount of activity it seemed to be generating. Though we didn’t expect everyone who posted to show up, having 25-30 people express interest was very encouraging for our first event ever. The days leading up to the tournament, we all practiced harder than ever before, eager to finally put our skills to the test against somebody other than ourselves. Unfortunately, Mild and Jtanic were unable to attend, but Azen, Anden and myself were more than enough to represent our crew.

Finally, the day of the tournament arrived, and due to complications with Mapquest we ended up over an hour late to our own event. Luckily for us, nearly all the other players showed up even later than we did. The American Legion post was actually a top-notch venue for such an early tournament: it had plenty of space, as well as tables and chairs everywhere. As players began to trickle in, we got increasingly excited as well as a bit nervous. Even if the final turnout was only 14 players, we had been given our chance to prove ourselves.

We had a grand total of two setups, and only ended up using a small corner of the venue. The tournament could have just as easily been put on in someone’s apartment, but the venue ended up being much better suited for a much larger-scale tournament a couple of years later. We spent time before the tournament warming up, mostly with each other, but also against the other players a bit; we didn’t want to give away too much about our playstyles before the tournament, but we were also dying to know how good these guys were. The friendlies before the tournament didn’t give us a very good idea, however, and at last the time came to get the bracket started.

As far as our ruleset, it was definitely in its primitive stages. Although we personally preferred turning items off, we figured most people still used them - so we had most items on, set to Low. We also played 5 stock matches ourselves at home, so that became the standard for the tournament. Character-lock was also utilized, meaning people had to write which character they planned on using for the entirety of the tournament, and they could not switch. Finally, our stage list had no stages banned at all, and since it was only one match rather than 2 out of 3, we simply used random select to pick the stage. This obviously wasn’t the ideal competitive ruleset, but with no established precedent, we did the best we could, and it turned out to be surprisingly decent from a competitive standpoint.

There was obviously no such thing as seeding yet, since no one had any idea how good other players were, so the bracket was totally randomized. We did implement double-elimination, at least, so one bad match wouldn’t doom anyone. In retrospect, the fact that I organized and ran a tournament with a respectable venue and a passable ruleset at age twelve seems surprising, but at the time I thought nothing of it. I was just giving us our chance to compete and test our skills.

As the first round started, we realized something: if we weren’t good, we at least weren’t bad, as Azen, Anden and I all won our first rounds. My first tournament match ever was a Sheik ditto on Hyrule temple, and I barely managed to squeak out the win over a much older Sheik player. The thrill of winning an “official” tournament match was incredible, especially at such a young age. Azen and Anden had less trouble with their first rounds, but nonetheless we had all moved on to round 2 - in a tourney with just 14 entrants, this put us in the top 8 already.

My next round was against a DK player, and our random stage ended up being Poke Floats, a stage that hardly anyone was comfortable with, including myself. I barely lost, yet I was basically unfazed; I didn’t think much of my skill, so losing was practically expected. I knew I still had a shot in the loser’s bracket, and to my surprise, in the third round I was joined by the man who trained me.

In our view, Azen was the favorite to win the tournament, but in round 3 he ran into a shockingly skilled Yoshi player named Eric from Maryland. Eric managed to take down Azen’s Link in a heated contest, sending Azen to the loser’s bracket. It was a bittersweet moment: we were in disbelief that Azen lost, yet also thrilled that other players were trying to push the game’s competitive side like we were. Luckily for us, Anden was still undefeated, and after making it to winner’s finals against Eric, Anden avenged Azen’s loss by defeating Eric’s Yoshi with Jigglypuff fairly handily.

I managed to win a couple of rounds in loser’s before having to face Azen. It was a foregone conclusion that I would lose since I hardly ever beat Azen in our practice sessions, yet the match ended up being amazingly close, a trend that continued for years in my tournament matches against Azen. My Sheik actually held the lead for most of the match against Azen’s Link on Corneria, but he clutched it out at the end, and moved on to have his rematch with Eric.

Loser’s finals was an epic runback of the most exciting winner’s bracket match, and this time Azen managed to bounce back and defeat Eric. My good friends and training partners, Azen and Anden, had managed to make it to grand finals against each other, a fact which we were very proud of. Just like in the practice fests at home, Azen seemed to be one step ahead of Anden for most of the finals, and although Anden took a commanding lead in the final game on Green Greens, Azen once again managed to come back from a deficit and secured his first tournament win ever.


The finals of our first tournament. We actually brought a VCR to record matches, and Azen later uploaded the footage, documenting possibly the earliest recorded tournament Melee match ever.

We were obviously pleased with the outcome, having all of our players in top 4 and Azen/Anden in top 2, yet we were also extremely excited by the prospect of other competitive players on a comparable skill level to us. Eric apparently had a group of friends that he practiced with constantly just like us, and they even had a crew name: DYCE, utilizing the first letter of each of their crew members’ names. Unfortunately Eric’s training partners didn’t attend this tournament, so we knew that there were more challenges that lay ahead of us when we got a chance to fight DYCE in full force.

After singles, when we ran a casual 2v2 event, Anden unknowingly created a crew name for us as well. When I asked for Azen and Anden’s team name, Anden thought for a moment before replying “Ha Ha You Lose.” We ended up claiming this as our crew’s name and shortened it to H2YL, which would later become one of the most dominant crews of all time.

Having gotten a taste of competition outside our crew, we were chomping at the bit for another chance to do so. Fortunately we didn’t have to wait long - a Maryland Samus player by the name of Kengo was hosting a tournament just a couple months later, and this time DYCE would be showing up in full force. Our practice resumed and we geared up to face what would surely be much tougher competition.

When the day arrived for our second tournament experience, Jtanic also joined Azen, Anden and I to represent our crew, and we figured this would be more than enough to handle DYCE and any other strong players we encountered. When we arrived at the hotel room venue, we noticed immediately that there were nearly three times as many players as our event, yet less than a third of the space: it was very cramped. Regardless, we were enthusiastic about how many more players there were, and eager to prove ourselves once again.

This was also the first time we got to experience a plethora of different playstyles, and even strong opinions about the game. I recall a Samus player by the name of Cyrus who insisted grabbing was “cheap;” it was not surprising that a Samus felt that way, given her subpar grab, but our Samus Jtanic scoffed at the idea and insisted Cyrus had a scrubby mindset. Regardless of differences in opinion, being exposed to so many different styles was great for us: the competitive environment for the game, although still new and fairly small, was already starting to evolve.

One of the strangest parts for me at age thirteen was the age of most of the other competitors: even Azen and Anden, both a few years older than me, seemed to be on the younger side, and the average age looked to be around 17 or 18. This fact didn’t intimidate me, though, as I successfully made my way through the first two rounds of winners. Azen, Jtanic and Anden were doing fine as well, but we noticed that the format was slightly different - this tournament was single elimination, so we had no room for error.

For Anden, Jtanic and I this proved to be devastating, as we all encountered strong players a few rounds into the tournament, including a couple of members of DYCE, and the three of us ended up with an early exit. Derrick, DYCE’s resident Sheik player, looked particularly skilled, and we suddenly knew we had a lot of work to do. Nonetheless, we had faith Azen would manage to emerge victorious again.

With an oddly constructed bracket and single elimination, there ended up being 3 players in “winner’s finals”: Azen, Derrick, and Eric. They had to play a three-way round robin, and to our surprise and dismay, Azen fell to both of the other competitors, ending in third place. Derrick’s Sheik actually came out on top, with Eric’s Yoshi in second, and suddenly H2YL was experiencing the sting of defeat for the first time.

We were motivated by this instantly; we went home that night and trained perhaps harder than ever before. Anden also provided some of the earliest post-tournament excuses, or johns, we'd ever heard, claiming he “beat himself” and his opponent simply assisted. Having played against so many new players and playstyles, we had plenty to work on and implement. In our mind, H2YL could easily be the best Melee crew, we just had to overcome the enemy, and in 2002, that enemy was DYCE.