From Mitchell Gallinger
I come to you bearing good tidings from the second annual Scholastic Esports Expo.
The day was busy but in a chill way. Students got to meet with some interesting vendors and businesses from the gaming field, and two of our students won raffle prizes! Isaiah Wilkinson getting a cool 3D printed dragon, and Evan Krahn winning a gift card.
When it comes to games, we maintained the Steinbach tradition of doing well and being top finishers along with the middle years teams from SMS.
In Pokémon Unite, our grade 9 team of Anderson Delaurier-Bell, Skyler Kroeker, Eli Singh, Isaiah Wilkinson, and Ryan Funk were able to defend their championship (as they were last year’s middle years champion). In round robin play they dominated, going undefeated in every match. In the grand finals, they had to play all three games in the series though, as the second match was lost by only three points (a typical Unite match had scores in the hundreds, so that is a very tight match). They still rallied and clinched the win in the end.
In Rocket League (which is soccer but played with rocket cars) Raiden Cheesequay, James Baumgartner, and Robert Banman dialed in and dominated round robin play, winning each series and sweeping most of them. In the finals matches were much tighter, the practice throughout the day made every team push each other higher. The first round of the finals bracket was a clean win as we had earned top seed. Semis were very tight though, with the series going into overtime on game three. The finals saw the crew up against Garden Valley Collegiate, who brought a much higher skill level with them than we had faced in round robin play. We ended up getting swept in that final series and clinched the runner up spot.
It was a very exciting day overall, and I’m sure the teams are excited for day 2, when our Super Smash Bros players will step into the ring again and we will have a couple teams for Brawlhalla as well.
in: General