EPTI spent most of my first few months as an undergraduate at Princeton running around on campus, putting up posters of zerglings on lampposts so I could find fellow SC’ers in college.
![[image loading]](http://i453.photobucket.com/albums/qq251/hazelynut/CSLrush.jpg)
My efforts.
It took a lot of posters and a lot of time, but soon, little by little, our little Princeton Starcraft family drifted together—some we found through TL, others through our SC tournament in November, and still others through word-of-mouth. We found enough people to join the CSL—which is, perhaps, a different story that’s simultaneously inextricable from this one—and now we spend Thursday and Saturday nights either practicing or battling colleges from around North America.
Now, I don't want to be too cheesy and declare my love for my newfound Starcraft family. That would be a lie. Imagining azndsh as a Starcraft father (whatever that would entail) is pretty ridiculous, and claiming raiame to be my little Starcraft sister is just a bit more ridiculous. But strange as it sounds, the Princeton SC team actually does have a Starcraft Papa in the form of azndsh, who tells us regularly at our Friday night practices that we need learn "mechanics, mechanics, mechanics." He gives us weekly match reports, looks at our replays and tells us why we sucked, picks the line-up for the week after considering all our strengths and weaknesses, and encourages all of our D- players to greater heights by letting the regular team members star brain them (it's kind of like having two trainers battle their pokemon).
Friday nights, we reserve a room at Frist Campus Center from 8pm to 2am, practicing for our matchups and devising strategies for our Saturday games. We pokemon battle the newbies, and sometimes we'll hook up a laptop to the projector to watch whatever PL match is on at the moment.
Saturday nights, we hold our breaths and watch our teammates play, or else we try to desperately warm our own hands as fast as possible before our own games. Sometimes the stream is running—when that happens, we crowd around the screen, sharing headphones and thumping each other on the shoulders when we're ahead or laughing when someone places a CC, starport, and factory down at the same time because he doesn't know how to macro. One of our players, DaisyP, is in another room, commentating the match—we always hear him through two solid doors and a hallway, yelling as the tension rises and Princeton comes back from a 0-2 beginning to a 1-2...2-2...3-2 win. There's something absolutely magical ("epic" is a word that one of our teammates described it as) when your whole team is in the room after hours of practicing together, staring at the screen and waiting in breathless anticipating. Maybe that's how the Korean progamers feel whenever their teammate is in the booth—it's a thrilling experience.
It really sucks to lose a game—a lot of us may know this from ICCUP. It sucks even more when you lose a game that matters for your team, or when you lose a match that matters for a league. But even when we lose 1-4 to UTexas, or when I lose clutch games because I don't know how to build hatcheries or drones, there's something wonderful in the soon-to-come depression that hits your entire team. You've seen Firebathero crying on his keyboard, but now you know why he cries on his keyboard. It feels terrible to lose—but isn't it strange, how a RTS game like Starcraft can make you feel these extremes of emotions? I used to wonder why basketball players took all their games so seriously, crying and being overdramatic about wins or losses. I've only begun to feel a little bit of that emotional spectrum, but with this week's Ro5 being the deciding factor to who goes to the top 8 single elimination bracket, I have a feeling that all of us are going to throw ourselves into the game over spring break. Dedication leaves us vulnerable to disappointment, but it's proof that we're actually living the game, and not just playing it.
There's something that I really love about Starcraft, that so many of you probably understand far better than I can—the beauty of the game, the world that it's created in South Korea, the drama that comes with cheering your favorite pro-gamer on—but there's also something else, something new and wonderful that Starcraft's brought to me—an SC family and something worthwhile that I can dedicate myself to.
![[image loading]](http://i453.photobucket.com/albums/qq251/hazelynut/Team.png)
Hey, we may have lost to MIT, but we look damn good.
