EPTSeeing as the venue was an hour and a half away from me and there was no way I would ever want to make the trek there on my own (even though I technically could've if I really really wanted to, I asked around and was able to find a carpool with a few friends. The car ride there and back was a lot of fun, I was introduced to some new music and added some of it to my playlist (which you can find here). Music has been a big part of my life for pretty much as long as I can remember, and I've started to enjoy sharing my tastes with others!
We get to the venue at about 11:30 AM. I have to play teams at noon, so after we check in, get our bags checked at security, and actually find the tournament venue, I get there and meet up with my teammate with literally 2 minutes to spare before the doubles bracket starts. I've always preferred doubles over singles, maybe I'm just better at it as a format. Our first match of the day was on stream, which I personally found hilarious, for multiple reasons:
1. As I mentioned, my teammate and I were essentially unable to warm up because of the time I got there. This meant we had to play on the fly and hope we did well, which I'd like to think we did for our first time teaming with each other!
2. During the match that was streamed and eventually uploaded to Youtube, I made a lot of mistakes but I decided I would just play better. This mentality worked when all was said and done, and we managed to beat them.
3. Our first opponents looked like they were still in high school. Which normally would not be an issue, since I've met high schoolers who were absolutely insanely cracked at Smash, but I admittedly did feel a little bad after beating them.
It does feel pretty weird uploading a video with my face in it. I have enjoyed having a sense of anonymity on this site, but it is what it is. (I'm the one in the Nickelodeon hoodie and with the headset).
After this, we had to play a team of top players. One of them was one of those high schoolers that's cracked at video games, we got our asses handed to us but I kinda knew that was going to happen going into it.
Then comes singles. I got shit on but we don't talk about it. This was around the time my motivation for singles started to die out, maybe a little before that. After a while I kinda realized that I valued seeing the homies at locals vs. doing decent at tournaments. I decided at that moment that I would take a break from entering stuff, and that it would be better for my mental health. So far it has!
After bracket, we all went to go get dinner, we hit up a local Frank Pepe's pizza place. It was a lot of fun, there were 9 or so of us just having pizza and that's genuinely a good core memory of mine.
Sunday rolls around, and everyone else in my carpool entered the Pokemon VGC tournament. They all did super well, and I was happy for them. I also got second in the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe tournament, which is a respectable placing. At the same time, it's also kind of annoying, because I feel like I played pretty bad during the finals, and I also got second at another tournament in August of last year so it would have been nice to win something for once LOL.
That's about how that weekend went. It was genuinely a ton of fun, even though my social battery kind of ran out the last day, legitimately one of the best weekends of my life. I hope to go again next year!
