Some of Terrace’s most unsuspecting students became E-sports state champions, beating out seven other teams to take home the title on Dec. 12. This is the club’s second state win, following their state placement in Rocket League last school year. The Terrace E-sports team was only established two years ago, but is already extremely successful, winning all but a single game against Sedro-Wolley this season. In the state finals, they enacted their revenge, beating Sedro Woolley 2-1 to become state champions in the game Street Fighter 6.
Street Fighter 6 is a game of reactions, predictions, strategy. Players must pull off incredibly difficult button inputs and combos. It is a tough game to learn, and it is incredibly difficult to master. But the MTHS Street Fighter 6 team’s goal was to do just that.
The team only began this September, but quickly built a dedicated group of players with the desire to compete. By the beginning of the season, they had a lineup consisting of junior Dewey Jones at the #3 spot, playing Zangief, junior Elijah Driscoll at #2, playing DeeJay, and captain junior Adrian Suharjoto at #1, playing Ryu. The team started strong this season, sweeping both of their pre-season matches.
After a close loss to Sedro-Woolley High School, the team continued training and improving over the following weeks, and began dominating the competition. The Street Fighter team didn’t lose a single match throughout the rest of the regular season, winning four straight matches. During the three-week break between the regular season and the playoff bracket, a new player appeared, that being junior Conlan MacLeod.
MacLeod joined the team and quickly rose to take over the #2 spot with his Zangief skills. He showed this skill in the following weeks, assisting in a 3-0 victory as well as defeating Sedro-Woolley in a rematch.
When they reached the playoff bracket, they made quick work of their first two opponents, beating Wapato High School and Lake Stevens High School in 3-0 victories. In the Grand Finals of the league, the Hawks were once again facing Sedro-Woolley. Driscoll began the match by defeating his opponent 3-1, followed by MacLeod finalizing the win by winning his match in a 3-0 sweep.
“We’ve been working towards this for a while now [and] we finally got to see the hard work pay off,” said Driscoll. The Hawks dominated during the season, but they still have to prepare for the next. Losing 5 matches out of 34 in this season, the team has still been making progress in their own right. Watching the matches for state, for example, was not as easy as the season seemed.
“It was really interesting to see all the close matches and how much our players progressed. It feels pretty good, we have a title now and everything,” E-sports president and junior Sebastion Bailon said. “I’m super excited for next season.”
The club embraces being called nerds, which comes with the territory of playing games everyday. “We are [nerds], but we’re winning games so y’know that means something,” Bailon said.
“[I’m] officially a nerd apparently, it’s pretty good though. We get to flex that we’re state champs,” Driscoll said.
While they have plenty of players, they are always looking for more students to join teams and play with. “It’s just a really nice club to play games with friends in, and it’s really easy to start… We meet everyday but you don’t have to come in if you don’t want to. It’s casual,” Bailon said. They are always trying to get more games, like Marvel Rivals or Splatoon, but they have to go through a process of approval by the district board.
Next up is Rocket League in the winter, then Super Smash Bros and League of Legends in the spring.
““I want to see what next year’s lineup is going to look like,” Suharjoto said. “This year it was kind of awkward, we blew through a lot of people and you know, I feel like that’s just going to motivate people to get better and I want to see them.. I want to face them when they get better.”
